SVR coaches vandalised

Did they have permission first of all?

 

"Street Artists" - You mean vandals

 

I would imagine so and I doubt the French see treating the Atlantic wall in such a way as vandalism.

 

If that's the case I don't have a too much of a problem with it, anyone who has contacted the appropriate authorities and it's been agreed what the design is that's fair enough, breaking into private property doing what happened at Kidderminster is a somewhat different matter. Have to say that peice on the Atlantic Wall looks better than what the previous 'artist' had done.

 

Wow! You can speak for a whole country can you? By the same argument, how many of the British are that fussed about a bit of paint on a railway carriage? (and I don't just mean on NP)

 

Quite a few actually looking at Facebook, daily mail and local rags.

To equate the illegal vandalism on the SVR to that perfectly legal French decoration is stupid, whether you like that dragon or not.

 

No but then if you read what I posted you will see I wrote ' I doubt that' not ' i know that ' but don' t let that get on the way of a rant. So it was supposition on my part based on the fact that the Atlantic Wall was built by the Germans using slave labour.

 

Fantastic.

Simon

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05rfp6m

Lesley Carr from the Severn Valley Railway Charitable Trust talking about the vandalism of the carriages over Christmas at 2:42:30

 

I seem to recall a story in one of the 150 books which is to the effect that it was impossible for the lner or lms to stable stock in interwar Glasgow over the weekend due to the vast amount of I) thefts ie no lightbulbs left on Monday morning, ii) people having sex in the parked carriages. Alongside this there were various stories about when coal trains stopped (were stopped deliberately?) children would pile on steal the coal all directed by their mothers.

Things were so much better in the olden days....

# as a caveat I am remembering the story from memory and may have got the details wrong and I don’t know how accurate the original rendering of the story was.

There is also a well known shot of a steam loco going over some troughs and everything overflowing, apparently the photographer and his friends had blocked the drains so it would overflow and they would get a better picture - isn’t that vandalism as well?

None of this is to condone vandalism/thefts but simply to highlight that it has always been a feature of railway life. It sucks. I am not sure what anyone can do.

 

I gather that when the White Funnel Fleet steamers were laid up in Bristol over the winter there was a similar issue involving 'ladies of the night'

 

The water trough incident is well known and part of railway folklore, the picture was on the cover of Railway World at the time. I knew the photographer who was one of the many characters of the day and is now now longer with us. No damage was done soon, it wasn't vandalism.

 

So tampering with railway property to create an artistic effect is ok if you like the image that comes out of it... all seems a bit hypocritical to me.

I am not sure ‘I caused no damage’ passes as a defence in court.

Either way, my point is that vandalism has always been part and parcel of railway life some of it low key stuff, some of it annoying and some of it potentially devastating ie Lartigue in 1899 as one example of vandalism causing an accident. The idea that it is somehow the youth of today is misplaced.

John Naar’s book on graffiti on the ny Subway was published 1973, so let’s say that all those ‘vandals’ were under 20 by now they’ll be in their 50s pushing 60, the vandals in Glasgow in their 80s and 90s and the Lartigue vandal has been dead a while I suspect.

Blaming modern society for something that has always been a feature of society seems a bit misguided.

As I say, this isn’t to condone it, it sucks, it is very annoying and expensive for the svr to deal with.

 

I think the dragon looks great. Looking at the before and after photos, the structure was an eyesore before it was turned into a dragon.

 

Vandalism - the deliberate damage, defacement or destruction or someone else's property. In that incident temporarily tying up ballvalve damaged nothing, a bit of mischief at worst. I once met another well known photographer at Garsdale who had spent days walking down the track from Appleby, walking down to the villages to restock with food and sleeping in PW huts. Shock horror mega trespassing although he spent one night in a warm signalbox as a guest of the signalman. The world was a more tolerant back then and was a better place for it.

 

I hope you appreciate the irony of posting that in a thread that stemmed from one with folk demanding the return of corporal (and even capital) punishment for some graffiti...

 

I'm personally quite happy with corporal punishment in certain circumstances, look back at the post about my own personal experience of it.

 

There was also the case of a coal train parked up overnight in Glasgow that couldn't be moved the next day - all the bearings had been nicked!

Dave

 

And metal theft is such a recent problem...

I’m pretty sure that Glasgow was not the only place where that happened. I’d add that it wasn’t just an urban thing either, looking at the reports of vandalism causing accidents it seems to be just as common in the countryside. There is a 1920 report which notes that vandalism is common and a rising problem.

Something else we can add into the ‘good old days’ are of course all the thefts from parcels and luggage. I know someone now in his 90s who was sacked by BR for pilfering. (Does the fact he is a character and he didn’t do any damage make it all ok?)

And if you are out in the countryside you then run into issues like animals on the track, misuse of farm crossings etc. I am only shocked that no one has advocated beating farm animals and the flogging of farmers for any damage caused, maybe also the birching of lorry and bus drivers responsible for bridge strikes?

As footnote in the 1550s there were complaints about rising levels of drunkenness, violence and theft in the towns and cities and in the 1840s about gang violence in northern cities.

Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose

 

Onr of the reasons that lighting towers were put up around major marshalling yards