Freight car graffiti, Part 10: newer cars

In previous posts in this series, I had depicted a range of degrees of graffiti application and weathering, in part to reflect the fact that different cars have different histories, and even if originally identical, can look quite different from each other after years in service. (To find the previous parts, you can use “freight car graffiti” as the search term in the search box at right.) In the present post, I want to consider relatively new cars.
     The owner of these models, Seth Neumann, models the UP in 1999, but has a few cars which were actually built a little later. He asked me to go ahead and add some graffiti and suitable weathering. I began with cars like this one with a Union Pacific reporting mark, with a single, small graffiti application from Dave’s Decals, set 6028:

Notice also above, the small tag to the left of the colored graffiti, taken from Microscale set 87-1536. The right side of the car, shown below, has a small “throw-up” (simple initials) also from set 87-1536.

     Another car worked on was this CRDX car, with the left side shown below. This graffiti piece, “SICK156,” is one of my paper overlays, taken from  the excellent book, Freight Train Graffiti, by Roger Gastman, Darin Rowland, and Ian Sattler (Abrams Books, New York, 2006), page 137. I described my paper overlay process in moderate detail in a prior post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-latest-column-in-mrh.html ).

     The other side of the car again has just a single, small piece, in this case from T2 Decals (you can visit their site at: T2Decals.ecrater.com ).

     Last in this group of three “new” cars was this TILX example, a very plain lettering scheme as is often seen today. I decided that this car would receive no graffiti. If you look in yards today, the considerable majority of cars do carry graffiti, but some (not always the newest ones) do not.

     The plan was to weather all these pretty lightly, given that they are relatively new, but to add tags to all of them. I want to discuss tagging in more detail in a future post, but essentially these are simple initials, words, or small line drawings. Shown below is the TILX car, illustrating these features (you can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish).

     These newer cars have certainly received some attention from the graffiti “writers,” but only modest amounts. This is one pattern among many, as you can readily see if you keep an eye on yards or passing trains today.
Tony Thompson