Western Railroad Discussion > I swore I would never post tagging...

…but this is obviously not your usual tagger!

I thoroughly despise the modern bane in the RR industry that is tagging. I consider it to be a scourge of epidemic proportions. I simply refuse to call the infected carriers of this visual disease ‘artists’. And as my title indicates I have a strong aversion to glorifying such nefarious activity by posting, or even shooting tagged images. I can’t say I’ve never posted any such images, though. Several months ago, out of patriotic outrage I posted a shot of a badly tagged American flag on a Union Pacific engine. Of course I also burst forth with the expected derogatory commentary…

But now it seems I’ve found myself in a bit of a hypocritical corner, if you will. One of the greatest pleasures I get out this hobby of railfanning is the sense of humor a person can apply to it. On one hand I try to produce the best photography I can while out engaging in this hobby. But on the other hand I simply love a good sense of humor. I do love to cut up and make other people laugh. A little bit of humor can get a person through some pretty rough patches in this life. And if humor was not allowed to be part of the mix, I seriously doubt I would be a railfan.

So when I saw this little scene rolling by me last spring I just had to shoot it. In an instant I knew the person applying the word “stuff” to this hopper was not your average, modern day criminal tagger. This person was more likely just an average work-a-day employee with a delightfully ironic sense of humor. And the word itself is one I’ve used numerous times for lack of more descriptive word in certain communications. I doubt that even Uncle Pete himself would get very bent out of shape with this ironic bit of rolling graffiti…

1. UP “rolling scene” at Aikins, KS on March 13, 2014.

Thanks for listening to my stuff!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Lance. I agree on the graffiti but railroad employees have been known to have a sense of humor too like the NS horse that had something added to it or the loco recently with "PC" hand marked in the dust of a unit...<G> Even Herby could have a little humor once in a while with his chalk stick.

Back during UP's "meltdown" years in the late 1990's, I noticed quite a few cars with the "We Will Deliver" slogan with a "when" and a question mark applied below it:}

SP8595 Wrote:
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> Back during UP's "meltdown" years in the late
> 1990's, I noticed quite a few cars with the "We
> Will Deliver" slogan with a "when" and a question
> mark applied below it:}

I've seen these with 'eventually' or 'someday' tagged


Dave Burman
modeling the modern Twin Cities
Trempealeau, WI

Seen one a couple of years ago with"late" on it.

This is a popular one. I caught this one in Galveston TX when we boarding a Cruise ship for vacation back in November 2010 with my iPhone.

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That message was made fun of so much that UP ordered all unused decals to be destroyed shortly after the meltdown.

i saw a We will deliver hopper and under it said "...sometimes"

I remember while working as a brakeman for Simpson Timber in Shelton in the mid-1960s and while riding a UTLX tank car for spot, took a piece of yellow chalk and added the letter "K" in front UTLX, changed the "U" to an "O", and changed the "L" to an "E" with the end result being "KOTEX" reporting marks!
Pete Replinger

tomstp Wrote:
> ...made fun of so much that UP ordered all unused decals to be destroyed...

Oopsie.. I did not know that little tidbit. Maybe Uncle Pete DID get a little bent out of shape?!! :^/
He seems to be doing just fine now, though...

Lance

I think it was at a UPHS convention about this same time that a UP manager of some sort was a featured speaker. He said there were three versions of this slogan:
We Will Deliver...
We Will Deliver.
We Will Deliver

Apparently the meaning of the message was perceived differently by some, depending on the number of periods. When the last version was decided upon, this particular manager found a rather sizable stack of "period" decals on his desk.

No, I don't uhmember exactly when, where and who this was.

IIRC, that "slogan" was the product of a new, high-priced
head PR guy. It came out at about the worst possible time,
when UP was having periodic meltdowns and in supreme difficulty
just moving traffic, much less delivering it.

Possibly the same guy who came up with the print ads a few years
ago that had a UP shield in them that looked like it had
been nailed together from old scrap wooden pallets

Funniest thing I ever saw was back when UP owned "Overnite" Trucking Co. It was an Overnite trailer on a UP TOFC train.
Someone had painted out Overnite and wrote, "Next Week".

Bob Helling
PRose

If you read the very small note on the left, it says something like: "If not now, when? 8/12 Freight Bandit"

Sacrilege painting over a Coleuses of Roads, Freight bandit is out of Phoenix, AZ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/14 19:26 by mococomike.

mococomike Wrote:
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> Coleuses or Roads,
> ?????

moose Wrote:
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> mococomike Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Coleuses or Roads,
> > ?????


It's the "other" graffiti in the first photo.

Yes the cowboy hat image from a old car knocker in Arkansas or Tx.