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2-C+C-2

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    running schedules

    in Metal Heads

    Posted

     

    Here's an interesting statistic: There are over 1.6 million freight cars rolling about North America. This includes boxcars, gondolas, hoppers, bulkhead flats, tankers, autoracks, refrigerated cars, and many others that roam over the hundreds of thousands of miles of track. Multiply that by 2 (two sides to every boxcar) and you have 3.2 million panels. In order for a writer to achieve fame on the lines, he or she must hit a multitude of trains. In order to be up on just 1% of the entire roster, a writer would have to hit over 32000 trains. Some of the most prolific writers in North America are attempting to hit as many as humanly or inhumanly possible, day & night, over and over again. Presently the most up graffiti writers on the lines are averaging under 600 burners on trains, which is a lot of time, risk, dedication, and paint fumes. When William "Upski" Wismat wrote about all the trains being hit by next summer, I think I said...dream on brother.

     

    There are not 3.2 million panels. Hoppers are the abundant car on the rails, at around 600,000 i believe, which means there are 1.2million hopper panels. These are cars that people avoid mostly, why? I still don't know, hoppers are some of the best cars, in terms of travel and panel size/look.

     

    Then you have boxcars, which includes reefers and such. Yes, they have two sides.

    Tankers, flats, ore cars, bottle cars, weird helium cars, track maintenance cars, all of these dont have panels, and therefore could not be included in the 3.2mil panels, drastically reducing the amount of cars that can be painted.

     

     

    One hobo by the name of Herby had his name and drawings on more than 70,000 cars. With over 1.6 million cars x2, it seems unlikely to be seen on a regular basis, but there are ways to improve the chances of being seen. One way (Besides hopping a freight with a bag full of streaks and paint) is to be selective about which type of care you choose to paint. There are well over 2,200 different initials assigned to these trains, so choose well. The first criteria for trains are whether they are short lines (local line usually only traveling under a few hundred miles). There's a unique practicality in hitting a short line as you will be seen over and over again. A good strategy for being seen on the regular would be to you travel to different parts of the continent and hit shortlines. That way, your pieces or monikers stay in a particular area. Mostly every train yard has trains that come back on regular occasions. These are usually woodchip cars, rock carrier gondolas, and pulp related lines, as well as some chemical cars, depending on the local businesses serviced by the railway. Knowing which cars are bound to stick around, and which ones are not can improve your chances of being seeing more often.

     

    This isnt true either, putting herby and his numbers aside, as I already said why those numbers are incorrect, we'll move on to the next subject.

    There are many, many yards that only see the same cars over and over again, and many, MANY yards that will never see the same cars twice(and if they do, its coincidence.)There is no need to travel to different parts of the country to paint short line cars. If you paint cars on a shortline, that never leaves, you have two or three, or ten or twenty cars now, that are on this short line, that will never leave these rails. They will always be around, and this usually means in some bumb fuck town with 3000 people, none of whom are writers, not in some town like chicago, where everyone is a writer and will see your cars. Your best bet is to paint system cars, or TTX owned cars, but Ill get to that.

     

    There is a rule that assigns specific initials to certain regions of North America that will always, after long travels, eventually have to go back to their home regions. Some initials are so abundant that it is hard to tell where they are from or destined for. This is where the second part comes in. In an initial that is commonly used like BN or UP, a different method is used. There are thousands of cars marked simply BN, but how many of them start with he same three numbers? Usually only several hundred or more. For example there are series of cars used for the same purpose. CP 203111, CP 203222 and 203333 are usually headed for the same place, leased from the same company. Paying attention to the numbers in a fleet can help you know what is what. By using the Automated Shipment Location Systems provided by the railways, writers can study the patterns of these cars, and even particular series of cars, to determine what cars are going where. This would involved hitting several of the same type and series, and comparing the trace data, and waybill record. This does not give a total knowledge of the destinations, but it can help you understand what is happening in the complex world of moving freight.

     

    Though this is generally true, you of course have exceptions. Companies lease cars from a railroad, for specific use, or any other reason they like. Could be the bulkheads, they like them, could be the shape, the color, they could think they fit more commodity in this specific car, any reason a company wants a specific car, they can usually assign it to their own pool. So a customer no where near BNSF could be leasing 10 BNSF cars for their private use to be loaded by them, shipped to someone else, not on BNSF, and shipped right back to them to be loaded again, Never placing the car near BNSF.

     

     

    Knowing the commodity and priority of the freight can also be useful. Intermodal trains (Twin stacks or Piggybacks), and Autotracks (Holy-Rollers) have more priority than boxcars and gondolas. These trains will make more trips, more often. By being selective, and by choosing a diverse number of initials, it is possible to archive more exposure at great distances. A burner from Alaska could be spotted in Mexico and come back with another burner on the other side. If someone from Kansas City hits a Canadian wheat train, it will eventually come back to Canada, and maybe never return to Kansas City at all. Flat boxcars may not always be the jewel in the yard. It's all in the initials and series, not the dimensions of the car.

     

    Think about it logically though. If you have a reefer that will always, ALWAYS be used to ship frozen goods, its going to go to maybe a few hundred locations to be loaded/unloaded, never leaving those specific routes, it has no need to. Now take a general boxcar, that can be loaded with bags of grain, turned around and loaded with paper, turned around and can be loaded with lumber, it is now going to hundreds more places. So in fact, the gems of the yard, assuming you care more about exposure and travel than make up of a car, are general service cars, gondolas, boxcars, hoppers. These cars have the ability to be loaded with myriad different loads, opening up their possibility to go more places.

     

    Whereas you have grain trains, that will always roll in 100 car sets, 50 car sets, bottle cars that will always go from spot a to spot b, both in the same town, or tankers that will always be loaded with eynthinol and will never carry anything different. Limiting where those will go.

     

    There is also another way to determine a car's general destination. Take a car like RBOX. They own 12,997 cars. They do not have any track or locomotive equipment at all. They are a company that leases a fleet of railcars out to different railroads, like Conrail or CN. There are many companies that do this. One way to tell a company like this is if the last initial of the car is X. This indicates that the car is not owned by a railway. but rather a private company. This is almost always an assurance that eventually that car will leave and never come back. Sometimes this happens with entire fleets. For example an entire fleet of Canpotex hoppers (ex Santa Fe hoppers) were being used in the 80's down in Texas, but were eventually moved as a fleet to move potash in Canada. The graffiti markings form the 80's were still there, along with the newer Canadian markings when the fleet was eventually moved somewhere else years later.

     

    TTX cars are general purpose cars, owned by TTX. TTx however, is a company jointly owned by the class 1 Railroads, which are BNSF, KCS, UP, NS, CSXT, CN, and CP. This company is a nationwide pool of cars available to these railroads for use. However, Railroads will lease cars permanently from this company for their use. Although these cars do tend to travel, they are still in the same league with other system cars.

     

    Another method to figure out a railcar's movements are smaller RR markings on the car. Near the load limit stencils is sometimes another little stencil that tells us whom the car is leased by. Other times it may be stenciled in the top left corner, above the ladder. I hit a DWC (Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific), which is owned by Canadian National, but leased from the International Bank of Miami. A week and a half after marking it, I traced it to Florida.

     

    This is generally true, but does not mean that these cars will not get out. CIRR for example has Hundreds, if not thousands of boxcars that go to ever state in the continental us. They do get returned to CIRR in Georgia when empty, usually. But if a customer unloads their car, and wants to put another load and ship it somewhere else, then they are able to do that, which means that car is going to travel to another place, before making it back home. So don't exclude cars because of their home. GVSR is a good example, everyone has seen a GVSR somewhere that's not Galveston TX, though that is their home base.

     

     

    In the world of freight riding, technology also plays an important role. To tell which direction a train is heading out of a yard, a rider finds where the FRED (Flashing Rear End Device) is located. This tells us which end is the rear of the train, and thus which general direction it is headed. The Automated Shipment Location Systems can also help us to know the destinations of a particular car or fleet of cars, with estimated time of arrivals and scheduled interchanges. This method could also help to determine a particular car's final destination.

     

    I just have to comment, no one calls these FREDs they are EOT, end of train device. It has taken the role of the caboose, read up on them, they are very interesting. If you can not figure out where the front/back of trains are, you should probably take up sword swallowing or something that will rid the world of you.

     

    What we are trying to accomplish is so extraordinary. We, the writers, hobos and railworkers, are contributing to the largest art gallery in the world, which is constantly moving around, almost randomly and chaotically. In that uncertain randomness, in that chaos of probabilities, we thrive for a taste of sychronicity and the bliss of seeing a marked freight roll by. We live to hear about someone seeing our designs somewhere in another far off place. It leaves us with such wonder and amazement; our souls traveling everywhere...

     

    Take5

     

    Body Soul Mind

    Burning America

     

    There you go, my two cents, or 8 cents, some amount of cents.

    Explain your name.

    in Third Rail

    Posted

    I was curious how everyone got the inspiration for your names. I came up with Price250 after watching a documentary on the sex slave trade. They were talking about how they were auctioning them off like animals, and some were going for $250.00. 250 bucks for a human life! :mad:

    Anyways, Price250 just stuck in my head, and it helps me to remember the people out there that have no control over their life, and the fight against corrupt politicions who make a profit by letting things go unchecked.

    Because of this, I am more of a anti-political writer, as is much of my graffiti.

     

    Sorry if this thread has already been done, I searched and couldn't find anything.

     

     

    You sound shocked that a human life will pull in as little as $250.00, which to me seems like a lot. Humans, as far as I see it, are the most replenishable resource on earth. Kids make people, adults make people, couples, singles, whores, prudes, everyone makes people, every single day. There is almost nothing else that is this readily available and made accidentally or on purpose with such exponential consistency.

    Engines

    in Metal Heads

    Posted

    waste management engine

     

    They own 3 engines, but I have yet to see anymore at the grade crossing. One other is always at the other end of the cars, while the other might be out of commission or I just miss it due to bad luck.

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