EMU - Langlaagte

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

EMU's early this morning...

[John Ashworth]

I always think it's sad to see trains vandalised with graffiti. In the UK I believe there is a policy that no vehicle will ever be allowed to run with graffiti on it, so the vandals never get the pleasure of seeing their work in public. It makes for a lot of work for maintenance staff, though, especially with the high availability demanded from modern loco and train fleets. It's not unusual to find that of a fleet of, say, 65 DMUs or EMUs, as many as 62 or 63 are required every day. Given that a certain number will always be out of service for scheduled maintenance, it must throw the spanner in the works when trains have to be taken out of service for graffiti removal.

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Fortunately the graffiti here is not terrible - but still an eyesore.

In the USA one approach adopted to fight graffiti has worked well.

Graffiti is not on the engines really, as the access to these is controlled - but is very common on the freight wagons.

Their approach, which has worked well, is to issue staff with a set of spray cans - when they do the inspection they then over spray the graffiti. This leaves colored patches everywhere (obviously) but at least the art does not get a public airing - note the same concept!

Apparently it works well!