Graffiti Rides The Rails From Coast To Coast

During the throes of The Great Depression, free transportation for those out of work was provided by trains traveling across America.

Though hitching a ride on a train was illegal, the sheer number of riders made it difficult for railway companies to deal with the situation.

Hobo encampments along railways throughout the nation influenced such writers as John Steinbeck to pen “The Grapes of Wrath,” the award-winning novel that was made into a movie directed by John Ford.

In fact, one of Steinbeck’s most graphic sequences in his novel depicted Rose of Sharon giving birth to a blue baby in a boxcar where she and her family had taken refuge during a flood.

Steinbeck has one of his characters cast the dead baby into the flood water and tell the dead baby to go show the world what poverty looks like.

Where does the graffiti on boxcars and railroad gondolas come from?

Not from the factories where the railway cars are manufactured. Not from the railway company’s personnel.

The images drawn on boxcars and railroad gondolas along with written messages come from those who obviously trespass onto private property, use the railway company’s property as their canvases and tablets and leave what they have rendered as traveling pop art exhibits.

As signs of the times, the graffiti passes by homeless encampments in some of the nation’s largest cities, and railroad companies such as CSX are left to deal with the graffiti situation and vandalism of property.