...creating a vibrant hub of commerce and connectivity. Welcome to Kansas City, where the heartbeat of the railroad industry echoes through the ages, shaping its destiny and leaving an indelible mark on the American landscape.
In the heyday of westward expansion, Kansas City emerged as the beating heart of the nation's rail network. It wasn't just its prime location that made it a railroad powerhouse; it was the spirit of innovation that coursed through its veins.
Imagine the clatter of steel on steel as locomotives chugged into the city, bearing the dreams of pioneers and the fruits of labor from distant lands. Kansas City wasn't just a stop on the map; it was the gateway to the American West, beckoning adventurers and settlers with promises of opportunity and adventure.
The Kansas City Southern established the city as a powerhouse among the Industrial Age giants.
It became a crucible of innovation, where bold ideas and pioneering technologies transformed the railroad industry. From the groundbreaking Stockyards that revolutionized the transportation of livestock to the skilled workers in the rail yards who pushed the boundaries of locomotive maintenance, the city was a hotbed of creativity and progress.
And the legacy of Kansas City's railroad heritage lives on, woven into the fabric of the city's identity. Today, as freight and passenger trains crisscross the nation, Kansas City remains a vital artery in the nation's transportation network, a living testament to the enduring power of railroads.
Times have changed, but the railroad remains. Most recently, the Kansas City Southern, one of the five Class 1 railways in the United States, merged with the Canadian Pacific to create the CPKC proving that KC remains at the heart of railroading in the USA.
Rail Yard Studios plans to be on-hand at ASLRRA in booth 1126 showcasing one-of-kind Industrial Age furniture creations like the Roundhouse Cocktail Table.
Our Roundhouse Cocktail Table - a fresh new limited-edition design from Rail Yard Studios serves as an homage to the longstanding history of Kansas City. The vintage switchstand used for the base is a rare sight these days, long since replaced by more modern styles of equipment with lower profiles, bow handles, latches and other improvements and added safety features.
The base is an antique switchstand used in a turnout to change the direction of the train. Throw the handle and move the points of the turnout to switch from one track to another.
So the next time you hear the distant whistle of a train or feel the rumble of tracks beneath your feet, remember the story of Kansas City—a city built on steel, steam, and the relentless drive to connect the world…and consider making yourself the rightful owner of one of Rail Yard Studios’ historical pieces.
]]>Catch the Art of Freight Vandalism on October 7 in Nashville at the next Graff Museum Open House.
Railroad freight graffiticomes in several different forms. Colorful spray-painted artwork composed of names and images represent some of the more well-known pieces among the civilian population. However, among graffiti writers and railroaders, the smaller monikers in grease bar remain equally familiar.
Aficionados of the art form refer to these rather subtle artworks by a number of different names including streak, tag, hobo art and the previously mentioned moniker. Sometimes simple, sometimes elaborate, they are widely appreciated by graffiti writers and railroaders alike, although some railroaders might add vandalism or other more expletive ridden epithets to the list of titles.
TOO MANY TO COUNT
Monikers overwhelmingly comprise the largest portion of freight art due to their small size and ease of execution. You can find a dozen or more nestled in the rungs of the ladders at each corner of a car and tucked away within larger masterpieces in any blank spot on a railcar.
Tags cover the well cars - those low-slung rolling stock for transporting intermodal containers. Tankers, autorack carriers and anything that rolls count as fair game among the graffiti crowd. Perhaps locomotives mark the only exception. Writers tend to steer clear since railroad personnel tend to be near engines.
But as with everything in the graff world, there are no hard and fast rules that every player abides by.
Some streaks are simply an “I was here” marking or a chance to test out a particular color of spray paint. Often the work of folks who do not wield a spray-paint can, the number of moniker writers is immense. It’s not uncommon to see an instance of a particular moniker only once and never see that writer appear again. Others are far more prolific.
See a selection of monikers and other freight graffiti:October 7, 2023 at the Graff Museum
WHO WRITES MONIKERS
Their authors may be train fanatics (also referred to as foamers). They may be members of a crew who don’t paint but serve as a lookout or someone simply there to bear witness to or document the process.
Some of the more well-known include Colossus of Roads, Cat in the Hat, The Kodak Kidd, and even well-known wielders of spray-paint like ICHABOD enjoy a robust number of streaks to their name.
As far as getting up, names like CREAK, Deuce-Seven, Jeatmix, Tex Goth and The Solo Artist represent just a few examples of some of the more prolific and best known in recent times.
Those in the graff and railroad communities revere a host of older, highly respected and retired or passed away artists. The familiar image of Herby, a sombrero wearing figure sleeping beneath a palm tree, has almost disappeared from the tracks these days, but can still be found in a select few private collections and derelict boxcars tucked away from public view.
WHERE TO SEE THEM
Safety First. Don’t go to the local rail yard to catch these.
Trackside viewing is a bad idea.
First off, these works of art are diminutive in size. As a train rolls by, the monikers are all but impossible to spot. On top of that, what you might get a chance to see is hit or miss. And most importantly, let’s not forget the dangers of being in and around the tracks and the legal implications.
Instagram offers a substitute to live viewing, and typing #moniker into the search can open up a whole new world of art if you have not gone there before.
But if you want to see them SAFELY and IRL, and there are places to catch them up close and in person without risking life and limb.
Black Butte in California hosted a show dedicated to moniker art in 20XX. The quaint little museum tucked away in a remote northern California town offered up a selection of works that drew quite the crowd – many arriving by way of an illegal ride on a freight train to attend.
The Graff Museum in Nashville, Tennessee hosts a small and growing collection of monikers best seen during their quarterly open houses (next one October 7, 2023).
The occasional hush hush event takes place for Buzz Blurr (aka Colosus of Roads). Usually those in the graff community are privy to the event long before it becomes public knowledge. Like the masterpiece writers, the moniker people play things close to the chest and do their best to avoid the authorities for fear of reprisal.
ORIGINS
Scribbling on a railcar began with hobos. While some of them could be of the “I was here” type of moniker, the early markings served a purpose for communicating between the illegal travelers of the rails.
And those early markings extended beyond the railcar to fenceposts and signs just like modern graffiti. Those monikers could denote places where there existed a dog to beware of, or a sympathetic woman who was apt to hand out a meal to a weary vagabond.
LOST FOREVER
The industry engages in the active elimination of this type of art – either by painting it over or when the car goes to scrap at the end of its life. You won’t catch many railroaders crying over the systematic destruction of these works as cars come out of service and head to scrap although there are a few in the industry who appreciate the scribblings.
Much of the older monikers have gone by the wayside with the constant renewal and turnover of railcars. Interchange Rule 90 establishes the accepted life span of railcars at 40 years. After that, according to American Association of Railroad standards, the car must be scrapped. Certain components can be harvested and reused, but the main housing of the car pretty much heads to the scrap heap. All the Class I railroads - Union Pacific, CSX, BNSF, NS, CP and CN follow the AAR guidelines.
Rule 88 extends that 40-year period to fifty years for certain cars.
There are great resources on the history of hobo markings that make up the modest origins of freight monikers. Maybe we’ll hit that in depth in a later post one of these days.
SELFISH OR UNSELFISH
Monikers are a niche art form appreciated by and large by insiders – those in the graff community and to a lesser extent, members of the rail industry.
These artworks are original Americana folk art at its best.
The artists create them knowing they have a finite life span. They make these drawings for the benefit of themselves and others in the graffiti community.
To the railroad industry it represents an entirely selfish act of putting someone’s mark on something they do not own.
For the artist, it is more unselfish – a project thrown out to the world for the free benefit of writers and railroaders. They possibly never see the work again, and they create with the knowledge that it is destined for certain destruction within forty to fifty years if not within a matter of days.
However you view it, monikers comprise a rich part of railroading history from hobos to aerosol wielding vandals. We’re preserving a very small slice of it every day.
]]>Expect the unexpected – a railroad industry conference sounds like less-than-glamorous industrial business, but we make sure it’s also filled with fun like our game tables, art and custom-made furniture crafted from authentic steel and wood railroad materials.
At Railway Interchange, the railroading community comes together every other year for the biggest show in the industry. In 2023, the venue will be in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Rail Yard Studios will be on hand for the festivities.
October 2-4, 2023 in Indianapolis
Find Rail Yard Studios in Booth 4183
Railway Interchange represents the gathering of three major trade show events under one roof.
REMSA (Railway Engineering-Maintenance Suppliers Association) supports the track and structures portion of the industry – the hard-working rough guys and girls who build and maintain the tracks. You’ll find us - Rail Yard Studios - in the REMSA section in booth 4183.
RSI (Railway Supply Institute) serves as the organization for the rolling stock portion of the railroads – locomotives and railcars.
RSSI (Railway Systems Suppliers, Inc.) covers the signaling and electronics segment of the railroad industry.
THE VENUE
If you love industrial machinery and gritty hard-working folks, it simply does not get any better than this show!
Located in the Indianapolis Convention Center, the venue is massive! The show space is attached to Lucas Oil Stadium where the Indianapolis Colts play making for a lot of square footage all under one roof! In fact, the Colts take on the Los Angeles Rams on October 1 – the day before the show opens (while we’re scheduled to set up, no less…sigh)
EVERYONE IS THERE
All of the industry giants will be in attendance – if it’s part of keeping the infrastructure in order that supports the backbone of the American railroad industry, they’re coming!
Count on seeing team members from the companies like Trinity Rail and Greenbrier, companies that make the iron horses that roll the rails. You’ll also see the guys that refurbish old equipment like NRE and those who help move around the used rolling stock like Ozark Mountain Railway.
You’ll run into the players from the Class 1 railroads (the big boys in North America). You know the names because they own the right of way and much of the rolling stock – BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern. And rest assured, it is an international affair with strong representation by Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, our neighbors from north of the border.
The supporting cast from the Short Lines and Regional Railroads will be there as well like Genesee & Wyoming and Anacostia among many others.
Keep an eye out for the people who make and sell hand tools like Railroad Tools and Solutions (those guys stock every railroad tool imaginable!), Stanley Tools and Warwood Tools (our Railroad Services guys love the Harwood spiking mauls).
You’ll see businesses that provide insurance and legal services for the rails. You’ll run across the contractors who build and repair the main artery of industrial traffic across the country.
Even the publishers of the magazines that chronicle the exploits and accomplishments of these hard-working people will be on hand. We’re talking about the fine people from Progressive Railroading, Trains magazine, Railway Age and more.
When we say everyone will be there, we mean EVERYONE
WHAT ARE WE BRINGING?
We change it up every time and try to keep it fun.
We’ve got something special planned this time around!
We’re bringing along an air hockey table for people to enjoy while they take a break from strolling the conference.
We’re going to have a couple of new sculptures we’ve been working on, and a classic coffee table from our collection dubbed the Derailment Coffee Table.
Oh, and a massive harvested piece of graffiti!
The graffiti comes through the Graff Museum, our not-for-profit entity that supports the arts, but also focuses on the issues of addiction and mental health that tend to plague the graffiti writing community.
We recognize the controversy in what the Graff Museum does, but before you condemn us, drop by and have a word with us, and learn more about this underground art form, the people engaged in creating it and the issues they face. It’s always fun to hear other perspectives on things.
Hope to see you in Indianapolis!
]]>Mancave Heaven
The owner of this amazing mancave holds a passion for railroad with his favorite being the Great Northern Railroad (GNRR) that ran just south of the Glacier National Park. The GNRR serviced the tourism trade from the inception of the park in 1910. Rocky the Goat, the mascot of the GNRR, became an icon among railfans receiving fan letters in his heyday.
The garage is one of a just a handful in this small development, with all of the neighboring space occupied by exotic sportscars. And when we say “sports, ” we really mean it. Revology, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Mercedes and an F-1 car (trust us, this is a sport that requires phenomenal physical and mental endurance). There’s even a set of Ducati bikes showing the evolution of the brand from the 80s to the 90’s, 2000’s and 2010’s.
The space we had the privilege to work in was originally conceived as a museum for the wildlife sculptures the owner collects. A huge fan of T.D. Kelsey - famous for his western-themed bronze sculptures, those works will dot the various tables and shelves developed for the space. Rams, bison, elk and cattle skulls make up just a small portion of the wildlife that punctuate the sculptor’s works will grace the tabletops crafted from reclaimed wood boxcar floors and steel coil car decking.
The Furniture
This project began with a 22-foot shuffleboard, a desk, a dining table and a handful of other furniture for the space. We pointed the owner to Buffalo Collection to add some softer surfaces in the form of a massive L-shaped sofa and recliner along with some bison hide rug and other southwestern style rugs. To marry the railroad and western them, they offered the only truly authentic option.
The project grew.
The list of furniture expanded to include coffee tables, benches, ping pong tables and a bar.
A God Steps In
With two massive walls on either side of the space, the owner entertained different thoughts on what to do with the 100-foot-long and 24-foot-high canvases. Original thoughts of photo realistic images of Glacier National Park gave way to a more exotic connection to the railroad when the owner became enamored with the work of Rail Yard Studios friend and famed YME Crew co-founder ICHABOD.
Ultimately, the owner wanted to commission ICHABOD to do the two walls. Secretive and elusive as the legendary writer is, it would be no small feat to develop a relationship where he gained a level of trust and willingness to undertake such a commission.
The owner dove into researching and understanding more about freight graffiti, and came to realize the stature of the rail god among the graff community. He watched documentaries on the YME crew, and soaked in all of the information he could about freight graff.
As we explored options for the walls, works of graffiti on rail car added to the mix with ICHABOD getting the lion’s representation, but also @duffomatic and @wanted1 making a cameo.
We even managed to sneak in a panel with a #jeatmix on it after we requested permission from the artist to feature their work on the panel in the bar. The prolific moniker writer seems to find a spot alongside many pieces from ICHABOD.
But the space needed its deity, and the Rail God was the only one that would satisfy the owner.
It took months of positioning and assurances. Certain requests had to be honored. Boundaries had to be established. Bear in mind, ICHABOD will walk away from a spot if someone he is with so much as opens a cell phone or flicks a lighter along a darkened railway. ICH warmed to the idea slowly, but had reservations. He worried that the exposure was too much.
He backed away.
We talked him back.
He hesitated, and reasserted his boundaries.
We were ready to give up, when he got back in touch.
The rail god was in.
But a more powerful God was about to enter the scene.
HURRICANE IAN
Ian ravaged the southwestern coast of Florida and delayed the project by several months. While the garage weathered the storm unscathed, the strain on the infrastructure rebuild for the rest of the area led to a more prudent approach from all of us involved, and we erred on the side of caution to be sure things could be completed and lined up logistically.
Execution
Finally the project was coming to fruition.
Stage 1 after construction was complete was the murals.
The rail god landed on the job site.
“There are no trains here,” he said. The absence of the iron beasts made the rail god uncomfortable. The need for that constant fix of autoracks, hoppers, boxcar and the sound of squealing steel on steel became all too apparent.
ICH had planned on being on site for a certain amount of time, but wound up there nearly twice as long. He got stalled at one point. With no fire at his back as there is in a train yard, motivation waned.
He traveled a short distance and found a rail yard. He needed the fix to recharge his batteries.
The second mural was to be far more involved, but a true landmark of his work.
With the walls covered in the bright colors of the legendary freight writer, it was time for Rail Yard Studios to enter the scene.
We added a number of commissioned works from ICHABOD to the mix.
Luxuriously crafted buffalo hide chairs and sofas from our friends at Buffalo Collection dotted the room. The mane of a majestic buffalo served as a rug in the office portion of the space. Of course, all of the buffalo hide remains sustainably sourced with a focus on carefully rebuilding the herds that once roamed the great countryside of the western United States.
The office took possession of our iconic Hopper Desk bookended by sets of our Ladder Track Shelves. A pair of custom credenza side tables from autorack doors and one of our our Sleepers Coffee Tables finished out the office mezzanine.
Downstairs, the fun began. Our ping pong table with oak boxcar flooring game surface got flanked by an autorack panel credenzas that ICHABOD put a hand to. Next to that stood the massive 6-foot tall Goat sculpture , and homage to Rocky the Goat from the Great Northern Railroad – a silhouette crafted from autorack panels salvaged from decommissioned cars used for transporting automobiles.
A massive dining table with railcar base and boxcar flooring eating surface filled the center of the room directly across from one of our Trestle Bars. The buffalo hide bar stools from Buffalo Collection softened the steel panel harvested from a decommissioned boxcar.
At 22-feet in length, the largest size shuffleboard table we offer through our partners at Olhausen fit the room perfectly! We rounded out the space with one of our Flatcar Coffee Tables, an Elevated Bench and a Switchpoint Credenza.
The look defies description.
Awesome, Amazing, Stunning.
But there’s more.
Yes, there is a round 2 coming up to finish things off – lighting, sculptures and a few more odds and ends will complete the look and feel of the ultimate man cave.
Stay tuned for the completed project!
]]>We have a passion for all things railroad.
That provides a simple explanation of a rather long journey.
Our adventure began in 2001 with the purchase of a railroad contracting firm, Railroad Services. It’s a small company that services industrial spur clients – manufacturers in the automotive industry, agricultural clients and a few railroad-industry specific companies. Among those are a handful of Fortune 500 companies.
Most railroad firms in our space operate large crews with lots of heavy equipment, and they send their employees out on jobs away from their families for days, if not weeks or months, on end.
Our team is different. We have a small crew and a modest amount of big yellow machines. We repair track inside of locations in Middle Tennessee and South-Central Kentucky, and our folks are home in their own beds every night. They replace wooden crosstie timbers and rail. They drive spikes by hand some days. They still railroad the old-fashioned way because it works, and because the jobs tend to be small – think a few hundred feet of track to maintain versus a few hundred miles.
We stay busy.
While the railroad repair and maintenance business has been a mainstay of our portfolio, it’s not always been the best of times. That’s what finally spurred us to create Rail Yard Studios.
In 2011, we embarked on a project that piqued the interest of company owner Robert Hendrick, and served the purpose of keeping the rail crew engaged in between jobs.
With a degree in Industrial Design, Robert envisioned furniture crafted from reclaimed rail components – steel and hardwood timbers.
Like all good entrepreneurial ventures, it started in the garage of Robert’s parents. It was only fitting since Pop (Robert’s dad) had brought him up building furniture from various items he would find in buildings slated for demolition.
The metal was easy to come by – iron cast offs from jobs where the railroad construction company engaged.
Wood timbers we sourced from one of our clients – a tie manufacturer. Working with them, we figured out a safe and sustainable way to source solid hardwood timber crossties. We source culls from the manufacturer that allows them to make better use of ties that don’t make grade. It also allows us access even when lumber is scarce. There is always a portion of the wood that will not make grade, so we rarely have issues with access to material.
We began with a handful of original designs including our Ballast Deck Desk, Switchpoint Desk, Sleepers Coffee Table and Double Track Credenza – just to name a few. We used glass tabletops for most of our collection to show off the structure of the tables we crafted, but that would soon change and lead us down another path.
Our first public showing was through a local art gallery. The response was far better than we could have anticipated.
Things grew from there.
We attended art shows across the country – One of a Kind in Chicago and Kimball Arts Festival in Salt Lake City and Western Design Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for example.
Then the railroad industry caught wind of what we were doing. Turns out railroaders like railroad, and we were and are 100% railroad.
We had found our people.
As we evolved, we looked to move away from so much in the way of glass tabletops and incorporated more wood.
We sought to add graffiti covered steel harvested from railcars, but the reclaimed steel had more than a few issues with it when it came to fabricating a tabletop. So we shifted a little. We loved the steel of the boxcars, hoppers and gondolas and the graffiti that came with it.
We partnered up with Troy Duff to create some tabletops on regular steel. And then we got hold of what we can only describe as “steel canvases” – sections of railcar that we thought made great compositions for graff artists to compose on.
Troy was all in as we developed our first show featuring his work on railcar panels.
From there, it was off to the races.
We embarked on a project with CSX that gave us access to some railcars. The floodgates opened up.
We managed to gain access to a handful of cars as they headed for scrap – getting last look at the rolling stock before it got torched and cut down to scrap.
We harvested a few pieces.
We didn’t know what we were doing, what we would do with them, and to be quite honest, our eyes were waaaaay bigger than our stomachs for the things we did early on. The sixty foot long six-foot-high side of an open gondola featuring an ICHABOD piece stands as proof that we were in over out heads.
Then #ICHABODtheRailGod came calling. He had seen that we had harvested one of his, and suddenly, the most notorious and legendary freight writer active today was in the fold.
We began to accumulate a nice little collection of art – pieces salvaged from railcars headed to scrap.
Let’s be honest. We thought about selling them.
But we wanted to do right by the artists.
And we had to do right by the railroads.
Compensating the artists for the work simply would not fly with the railroads – we would lose access and the whole effort would fall apart.
So, we set about putting together a museum.
With a healthy dose of help from ICHABOD and COUPE of Legends Thursday fame, we began to establish the Graff Museum.
We focused on preserving the art at first. We knew that addiction and behavioral health issues plagued the graff community, and addressing recovery was always a subtext. It wasn’t until we elevated the element of recovery to equal billing with the preservation of the art that things clicked.
Through the museum, we preserve art and we bring awareness to the issues of recovery around the graff community. Our goal is to get the museum funded to the point where we can begin to offer the opportunity for recovery through programs like Music Cares provides within the music industry.
Indirectly, we’re using our efforts as a museum to allow the artist we harvest to give back to the graff community as whole through our efforts.
It’s called the Graff Museum, but already friends of the museum have begun calling it “The Graff”
And there’s more coming.
We will keep evolving and changing.
We will continue to move forward and strive to do the right thing.
Whatever we do, rest assured, we’re going by rail, and we’re going traveling in style.
Feel free to follow along as we continue the journey.
]]>Cue up the Arlo Guthrie classic, “The City of New Orleans” because the railroad industry is headed to the Crescent City! It’s time again for the American Association of Short Line and Regional Railroads Conference (ASLRRA), and Rail Yard Studios will be there.
Amtrak still operates, The City of New Orleans, servicing the line from the Crescent City to Chicago by way of Memphis, Tennessee. But there’s much more to New Orleans than simply a train named after the “Big Easy.”
Some call it the Paris of the South with its ornate, wrought iron balconies and rich cuisine, topped off with a good number of different dialects all unique to the city.
Chat GPT has been abuzz in the tech world of late. We decided to put it to the test, and go high tech with the announcement of our booth at the upcoming ASLRRA Convention in New Orleans April 2-4, 2023.
We started by asking it to describe Rail Yard Studios, and it did a damn fine job.
About Us
Rail Yard Studios is a furniture company based in Nashville, Tennessee, that specializes in creating a variety of unique, handmade furniture pieces like tables, chairs, benches, and bed frames from reclaimed materials salvaged from historic railroad yards and buildings.
The company was founded in 2011 by Robert Hendrick and has gained a reputation for creating unique and high-quality pieces that reflect the history of the materials they use. The company has been featured in a number of media outlets, including HGTV, DIY Network, and The History Channel.
Rail Yard Studios' furniture is known for its rustic, industrial look, with many pieces featuring the patina and character of the original materials, such as weathered wood, steel, and iron. Some of the materials used in their furniture pieces include oak railroad ties, steel rails, and iron plates. The company's products range from tables, desks, and bookcases to lighting fixtures and decorative pieces.
In addition to creating unique furniture pieces, Rail Yard Studios also places a strong emphasis on sustainability and environmental responsibility. By salvaging materials that would otherwise be discarded and transforming them into functional works of art, the company is able to reduce waste and promote a more eco-friendly approach to furniture design.
Important Things Chat GPT Missed
Chat GPT tech definitely hit the nail on the head with regards to what we do and our dedication to eco-friendly practices, but it failed to mention that we would be at the ASLRRA Expo in booth 723.
The Rail Yard Studios booth will also include our new Graff Museum (a not-for-profit venture) that focuses on preserving railroad graffiti art and culture while also giving back to help promote recovery within the graffiti community.
Graff Museum
The Graff Museum is brand new, and Chat GPT struggled with that, so here’s the quick overview.
Through the museum we preserve art – railroad graffiti to be precise.
And we give back to the graff community through programming aimed to bring awareness to the issues of addiction and behavioral health which plague that community so deeply.
Safety represents a primary focal point for the museum, and even folks like Operation Lifesaver have shown up to participate because we’re able to offer them a voice in that community to promote safety around the tracks.
New Orleans Railroad History
We checked in with Chat GTP again for a little history on NOLA. It came up with a bit of high-quality facts about the good old days in the port city.
The history of railroads in New Orleans dates back to the mid-19th century when the city became a hub for transportation and commerce. In 1831, the Pontchartrain Rail-Road Company was established, and it built a five-mile railway line from the city center to Lake Pontchartrain. This railroad line provided a faster and more efficient means of transporting goods and people from the port to the city, making New Orleans an important transportation hub.
In 1852, the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad Company was founded, which connected New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, and later to Memphis, Tennessee. This line became a crucial link in the transportation of goods and people from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. In the late 1800s, several other railroads were established in New Orleans, including the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Illinois Central Railroad, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which further enhanced the city's importance as a transportation hub.
During the Civil War, the Union army occupied New Orleans and took control of the city's railroads, which helped them to transport troops and supplies. After the war, the railroads played a crucial role in the city's economic recovery and growth. In the 20th century, the railroads faced competition from automobiles and trucks, but they continued to play an important role in the city's transportation and commerce.
Today, New Orleans is served by Amtrak, which operates several passenger trains to and from the city. The city's historic Union Passenger Terminal, which was built in 1954, serves as a transportation hub for Amtrak and several other transportation providers.
Beyond the railroad – food, street cars, railroads and jazz!
But Chat GPT missed a few tasty tidbits – and we’re not talking beignets and chicory coffee, we’re talking significant details.
It failed to mention the classic New Orleans streetcars that still patrol up and down Canal Street and St. Charles (the neutral ground between English and French sections of the city back in the long-ago times. That street car line served as a dividing line between the different quarters of the city.
Today, New Orleans represents the only deep water point where all six class 1 railroads meet - BNSF, Canadian National (CN), CSX, Kansas City Southern (KCS), Norfolk Southern (NS), and Union Pacific (UP)
And since we started with a nod to music, let’s cap it off with a word about the music the city is so famous for. The New Orleans Jazz Festival draws some of the greatest musical talent in the country to its stages. The event goes for over a week and the party is non-stop during the entire event.
If New Orleans wasn’t already on your list of places to visit, with ASLRRA coming up and all the other attractions, now you have good reasons to add it.
]]>If you’ve ever watched a train covered in brightly covered graffiti pass by and wondered about the fascinating sub-culture of freight train graffiti, you’ve arrived at the right place.
We’re pleased to announce the next open house for the Graff Museum on October 7, 2023. The museum features strictly freight train graffiti – original works harvested from decommissioned rail cars. The museum also brings awareness to the addiction, suicide and other mental health issues that plague the graff community.
You can donate to the museum and our addiction recovery efforts here. The Graff Museum is a 501(c)3 not for profit organization.
This effort is the culmination of several years learning about this unique sub-culture, working with artists and historians deep in the community and collaborating with them to foster a better understanding of the world they live in.
Graffiti carries a message, and it’s not subtle.
On the surface, it says, “I was here, and I have no respect for your property rights.”
That’s the perspective of the railcar owner, and probably from the comfort of the seat of your car while you wait for the train to pass at a grade crossing.
But it encompasses a far greater message hidden between the lines of these massively scrawled pseudonyms and images.
The moniker that a writer chooses provides them a degree of anonymity. Just as using only your first name provides you with a certain degree of anonymity in a twelve-step meeting.
“Hi, I’m Robert, and I’m…”
But there exists a real person with a real name and often a real problem behind that brightly colored painting. It represents a release for the artist, an unleashing of creative energy on a grand scale.
And the artwork is meant to distract you from the issue at hand.
There remains a far deeper message deeply entwined in the paint carefully positioned to avoid reporting marks, reflectors and other critical stenciled information on the side of the rail car.
It screams a message six feet in height and 25 feet in length if it takes up half the car. Or 12 feet high and 60 feet long if it’s an end-to-end work of art on a boxcar.
More often than not, graffiti represents a cry for help.
The Berlin Wall divided a people, cut off families and broke the culture of an entire country. Over decades, one side became covered in paint to protest the isolation and separation of a people. The painted walls of the west side became the mouthpiece of not only the West Germans, but also the East Germans who had no voice.
So too does freight graffiti give voice to the largely marginalized of our society.
The freight graffiti community suffers an inordinately high instance of alcohol and drug addiction and significant suicide rates. Many of its members represent people lost within a system who have difficulty fitting into the traditional roles in society. Many eventually find their way, but there are also many who do not.
COUPE runs the Legends Thursday podcast that has interviewed over 300 graffiti artists. He has established himself as the preeminent historian of the freight graffiti sub-culture simply by the volume of people he has encountered and engaged in meaningful conversation on the topic, not only of graffiti but also far beyond. COUPE puts the number of those with substance abuse and/or behavioral health issues at 50-70% of the community.
Social media further supports that perspective. Following graffiti writers on Instagram, we witness a constant stream of lives lost before their time. The #RIP posts occur regularly, and they typically lament lives lost well before their time due to overdose, suicide or other unexplained reasons – all younger than the lifespan of the average American and preventable with the right assistance.
We’ve assembled a collection of art from various artists in support of recovery and prevention. It’s a cross-section of the sub-culture just as that sub-culture is a cross-section of America.
Among them are writers we know to be in recovery. Writers who have succumbed to addiction.
Their ranks include starving artists, construction workers and graphic designers, just to name a few.
They hail from a growing number of places with the early collection featuring artists from New England, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland and western states among other places.
The collection includes masterpieces, throwies and monikers.
Some of the artist we know. Others we are still searching to connect with.
It’s an incomplete collection, but one we continue to grow through our efforts each day working in and around the railroad industry.
It’s a small way to preserve a piece of this unique community.
Yes, you can go sit at a grade crossing and watch a train pass by and get a view of graffiti, but this is a curated collection.
For many of the pieces, we have stories behind the execution of the piece from the perspective of the writers themselves. We’ve incorporated information from interviews with the artists to provide a more complete picture of the culture.
Visiting the Graff Museum is like benching with a seasoned graffiti writer that knows each piece rolling by. Visiting the Graff Museum provides an insight to the freight graffiti sub-culture eclipsed only by walking the poorly lit tracks at night with a backpack full of rattling spray paint cans bracing for danger to pop out at any moment from between the next railcar.
Join us...
Nashville, TN 37210
You can donate to the museum and our addiction recovery efforts here.
]]>Superheroes (or Supervillains, if you will)
The deeds of freight graffiti writers verge on the realm of superhuman feats; the likes of which we find chronicled in the cheap pulp paper of comic book pages featuring superheroes and supervillains. These aerosol vandals don’t stop speeding trains or leap tall buildings, but they climb fences and they cover entire railcars from end to end, overnight, under cover of darkness in the industrial wastelands where only bad things could happen.
Yes, graffiti artists and superheroes (or supervillains, if you like), have a great deal in common.
Both have pseudonyms and alter egos.
Many have a symbol associated with them, like Batman or the Fantastic 4. Compare that with White Ninja and AWARE or Colossus of Roads.
Graffiti writers seem to have borrowed their letter style from the bold colorful pages of the comic books that chronicle the escapades of superheroes (and supervillains…sigh).
Just as the authorities view superheroes as the scourge of society, so do the railroad police and courts see graffiti writers as menacing outlaws to be pursued.
But superheroes have their kryptonite and other substances that weaken them, and so too do many graffiti writers.
But let’s strip away a bit of the mystique around these supervandals, and see what really lurks beneath these all too human heroes and villains.
Who Are They
Clearly graff writers have extraordinary powers including:
Much of freight graffiti remains unremarkable – a simple name scrawled in a sometimes legible sometimes nonsensical moniker. The writing can be hard to decipher. Mostly, writers put up their name or sometimes the name of a friend. The message is typically simple – I was here. Spiderman has always been notorious for leaving a message written in the webs he leaves in his wake cluttering up the skyline view.
Some graff is elaborate – like a web and worthy of a museum. Some are crude like the collection of smashed cars left in the wake of The Incredible Hulk – far more destructive than a bit of aerosol paint on a rusted hulk of steel railcar if we may say so.
As we’re prone to say around here, the railroad curates the largest art museum in the world, and they don’t even know it.
The images are often crude or rude even, while others border on the fantastical, mimic cartoon characters or even evoke the style of the great European master painters found in fine museums around the world.
Age
Rest assured graff artists are all too human. Most tend to be in the 30-55 age range. There are younger (and older), but the majority of the more prolific tend to be in that original crowd. Most superheroes fit into that 30-ish and up range with a few younger ones making waves and showing that they can hang with the old dogs.
Graff artists largely grew up starting in the 1980s along with hip hop and some heavy metal heads just as comic books were beginning a golden age of acceptance.
While most fail to stick with it for too long, others make it a continuing outlet for their creative frustrations.
The crowd tends to be primarily, but not always from a blue-collar background. Many in the graff community have been marginalized by society, unable to fit in with traditional roles.
Profession
They could work as a reporter at the local newspaper like Clark Kent, but these artists make up a cross-section of the American workforce. Their alter-egos are employed as tattoo artists, graphic designers, and construction workers. But their ranks extend out into postal workers, technology, even the occasional doctor and a lawyer or two can be found among these aerosol vandals, and somewhere among them, there must be an evil scientist – just sayin’.
And also, railway workers – although that may surprise some in the railroad industry. Like a double agent, they play on both sides of the law. That fascination with trains begins early, and joining on with the railroad offers the opportunity to remain close at hand with something that they appreciate.
Addiction
Like a vampire, sunlight is the weakness of most every freight graffiti writer as they work their magic under cover of darkness.
Tragically, alcohol and drugs also tend to be their kryptonite.
The graffiti artist COUPE runs the Legends Thursday podcast which has interviewed well over 300 freight graffiti writers over the years. He puts the addiction and serious behavioral health issues figure at 50-70% of the community.
The constant stream of #RIP and noting of passing members of crews through social media outlets among the graff community further attests to the issues within this crowd.
Rail Yard Studios founder, Robert Hendrick, appeared as a guest on one of the Legends Thursday round tables with three other writers. Within 3 weeks of recording the episode one of the participants had died. It remains unclear how he died, but it was yet another forty-year-old death in a community where lives are being claimed long before their time.
The issue among the community is so severe, that around here we’ve taken to saying "think of it as a cry for help." How much louder can you scream for assistance than to write your name in brightly colored spray paint on the side of a 12-foot tall and 60-foot-wide hulking piece of steel and then send it off around the country, not once, but multiple, multiple times.
As we’ve begun to develop the Graff Museum, our goal is to bundle awareness and recovery resources with the museum.
Why
Superheroes are drawn to danger. It’s simply in their DNA. They go where things are noisy (think BAM! POW! WHAP! And you know what we mean).
Precious little is as loud as a train yard when they’re switching. It takes some serious page covering interjections to capture a train yard on the pulp pages of a comic book.
Seems graff artists are drawn to the danger, just like superheroes.
The hazards involved in being around trains on a professional basis can be daunting, but as a member of the general public, it should be terrifying. Nevertheless, people paint these cars every day, but why?
Because it’s there.
That’s why people climb Everest. It’s why people scuba dive.
It’s an adrenaline high and an endorphin release.
Graffiti artists choose to blow off steam painting on trains, the same way someone else may choose to bicycle 100 miles or hike the Appalachian Trail – we know graff artists who have done both. They are just a secret alter-ego of the entire American landscape.
When
Any superhero will tell you nothing good happens after dark, and that’s when these vandals go to work. Most artists operate in the dead of night making the works they pull off all the more impressive.
They have little or no light. Often times, they stand atop an inverted 5-gallon bucket or ride on the shoulders of a buddy reaching the highest points they can from the gravel bed of the tracks. And that’s just the start of the challenges they face as they attempt to avoid the authorities and ply their illegal trade.
Where
Any railcar holds an appeal for graffiti writers. They prefer to work their art in private before it gets unveiled to the world as it rolls down the tracks. Unattended rail cars parked in yards or on relatively quiet sidings and spurs offer the most alluring spots, but they've even been known to hit commuter rail lines as they stop in a station.
It’s all about managing the risk of getting caught against the reward of the rusted steel canvas hulk.
However, certain cars are so coveted by graffiti artists that they are willing to take a higher risk to get them. Cars with flat seams offer a smooth surface and easier writing. Cars with top hats or ribbed sides present a greater challenge to the writer. It’s akin to the superhero fighting his foe in plain sight while everyone looks on, but they still don’t want to get caught. Both supervandals and superheroes run the risk of getting unmasked.
As many intermodal containers as ride the rails, it’s easy to see that the undulating sides are of little interest to the graffiti writer. The intermodal carriers are more likely to get painted than are the containers themselves. Now you know why.
Big open spaces make for an easy opportunity to view the work as they go, but they also make for high-risk situations for being spotted and turned in to the authorities. Most freight writers are quite comfortable painting between two lines in an area separated by as little as a couple of feet of space. That short distance means they can also use the car on one line to climb higher up the side of the car to the more elusive real estate on the car.
The End
At the end of the day, graff writers are mere mortals. Substances may make them less powerful. Eventually their secret identity gets stripped away. All too often they wind up dead. The feats they accomplish go largely unappreciated, but to those who know, they’ve changed the world.
Graffiti artists set out to use their artistic powers and gifts to heal and beautify the ugliness of the industrial world while avoiding the authorities who would have the status quo remain as it is.
]]>On the railroad, engineers, conductors, brakemen and carmen all speak a fluent secret language they share with the railcars themselves. Arranged amongst the bright Hi-Viz colors punctuated by rusted stains of decaying steel, a series of cryptic markings keeps railroaders informed and sets standards for these relics from the Industrial Age. It’s an abbreviated form of communication, short on, but not completely devoid of, vowels.
The truly fluent speakers of this arcane language will be in attendance next week at RSI Expo where you’ll find us playing ping pong in an attempt to disguise our own shortcomings in the language.
The colorful railcars and engines are a distraction or rather an attempt to garner attention like a male peacock on display – difficult to ignore. That’s more for safety than it is for show and branding. Sure, they want you to know they are their equipment, but more importantly, they don’t want you to be able to ignore it for yours and their safety.
The livery is the logo and paint scheme for a car. Most railroaders can identify the car owner simply based on the colors and paint scheme. Each railcar fleet owner has its own graphics. Locomotives are distinct from other rolling stock, but even a boxcar compared with an open hopper requires the adaptation of the paint scheme and layout to make it work.
The livery includes the logo that identifies its owner, or at the very least, one of its previous owners. Owners may change, but the livery often lives on long after an owner has sold their fleet. Graphic standards change over the years as well. Since rail cars run for 40 years or more, the chances are, the livery will change at some point during a car’s lifetime.
Other than the logo, reporting marks tend to be the largest letters and words on a car. Reporting marks represent a unique identifier for each railcar. Think of it like a username for the car – no two are alike.
Reporting marks consist of a series of letters followed by a series of numbers.
The letters identify the rail car owner. UP stands for Union Pacific, while BNSF stands for Burlington Northern & Santa Fe. There are over 3,400 car owners in North America with their own unique letter combination to start off the reporting mark. While most owner IDs are 4 letters, some 3 and even 2 letter IDs do still exist.
The number following the letters is simply a serialized number assigned to the car. Most don’t start at 1, but have a predefined series that they work in. For example, within a fleet owned by company ABC they may set aside the 1000 series for open hoppers and the 2000 series for steel gondolas and so on.
While the large letters on the sides facing out from the track are the most noticeable, the reporting mark is secretly tucked away in numerous places on a rail car.
For folks working on the trains, it may not be easy to get a look at the big reporting mark if there are close clearances or if they have come up on the car from the end of the track. Imagine being in a spot with an adjacent track and having to step onto that track in order to view the car ID.
The reporting mark appears on the ends of the car, not just the sides.
Most fleet owners stencil the reporting mark onto the trucks (the wheel sets) of each car. Doing so serves a few purposes. Of course, it makes close clearance identification much easier. But also, trucks are fairly simple to change out on a car. A damaged set of trucks can be readily replaced (like a bad tire on an automobile) and it rolls on. For accountability, that stenciled reporting mark on the trucks can be important in a major derailment. Investigators would be more readily able to identify what parts go with what cars should that information be relevant in determining the cause of the accident.
Railcars get sold – just like used cars do. Sometimes the whole fleet gets sold from one holder to another. Typically, the original running marks stay in circulation.
For example, CSX still operates some of the old NYC (New York Central) reporting marks. Some of those cars run the old NYC livery colors and some run the newer CSX colors. Other times a railroad will integrate a fleet in and provide a new reporting mark within their fleet, but that means administrative paperwork and painting which can take a car out of service until the work is done. In an effort to be more cost-effective, most railroads opt to continue to operate under original livery and original reporting marks until push comes to shove.
You should never ask a girl her weight, but you can usually guess within a few pounds. On the railroad, there’s no guessing required, but you do have to be accurate within 200 pounds which is more leeway than you will get from your significant other.
LT WT means Light Weight - the unloaded weight of the car. Weights vary depending on the type of car, but a 50,000 LT WT represents a fairly average LT WT for an open hopper. Regulations require car owners to periodically recertify the weight of the car, and the figure recorded has to be within 200 pounds of the actual weight. Physical changes like modifications to the car, damage or stuck material could cause the LT WT to vary.
The Load Limit is the maximum allowable weight of the car when loaded. It’s the figure not to be exceeded – kind of like that weight limit we all ignore in the elevator. An open hopper may have a LD LMT of 250,000 to 350,000 pounds. Note that the LD LMT is the weight of the goods being moved, not the total weight of a fully laden car.
This marks an important distinction, so let’s be sure we get this clear.
For example, when a fully laden car is rolled onto the scales, the figure not to exceed is the sum of the LT WT and the LD LMT combined – the weight of the empty car plus the weight of the cargo it is certified to transport.
A car with a 50,000 LT WT and 250,000 LD LMT would top out at 300,000 pounds.
This marking identifies the size and composition of the brake shoes on a car. Rather than having to peer under the car and look to see, the marking makes it easier for carmen to identify the components required.
The number tells the width of the brake shoe for the car. Brake shoes run in half inch increments from 1-1/2” up to 3.” You’re not supposed to mix and match different size shoes since it can affect the braking performance of a car because the prospect of uneven braking on a fully loaded 350,000 steel beast is particularly horrifying.
The HF stands for High Friction Composition materials meaning that the brake shoes on this car are not made from cast iron. Older model cars used cast iron brakes, but those are fairly rare among fleets these days.
Do Not Hump
Beavis and Butthead are snickering, but there’s a reason for this rather unusual designation on a car. It refers to the practice of using gravity to sort railcars and build trains.
In a hump yard, a consist (line of cars) is drawn slowly over an elevated point in the track. That high point in the track serves to break apart the cars at each coupling, and then from a control tower the cars are shunted to various tracks and the incoming train is separated into multiple other trains.
Certain cars and certain loads are simply not made to be humped. It shifts the loads creating safety issues or damages the car.
So when it says “Do Not Hump” just take their word for it.
We’ll be talking in code like this next week while we hang out with the folks attending the 2022 Railway Supply Institute Conference.
We’ll be arbitrarily omitting vowels from our words and speaking in obscure phrases as we discuss features and equipment for locomotives and railcars with the foremost experts in the industry.
If that sounds like fun to you, stop in and play ping pong. We’ll codespeak with you all day long October 11-13 in Fort Worth, Texas at RSI Expo 2022!
]]>It’s a marvel to watch these railcars weighing as much as 350,000 pounds being strung along down the tracks like massive steel circus elephants with their trunks holding the tail of the one in front of them.
We love seeing those big freight cars rolling down the tracks.
The railroad operates on an immense scale that defies comprehension in terms of the amount of material and goods moved on a daily basis.
To put things in perspective, the Class 1 railroads alone operate over 23,000 locomotives that are integral to mobilizing the fleet of 1.5 million railcars in North America. Speaking of railcars, you can find us at the Railway Supply Institute Expo in Fort Worth, Texas on October 11-13, 2022.
Let’s compare the US Railroad with the current Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
The Great Wall of China is impressive. Officially listed at 5,500 miles, there is a claim by a Chinese study that inflates the length to 13,170. It’s visible from the moon, or so the legend goes, but we’ve never been there, so we can neither confirm nor deny that claim. It took 2,300 years and nine dynasties to complete it.
At over 140,000 miles today (that’s an uninflated number for those drawing comparisons), the US railroad exceeds the length of the great wall by over tenfold when compared to the inflated figure. That shifts to 25-fold when compared with the official figure for the Great Wall. The railroad has been built in a little over a century under a single dynasty.
This one is not even close.
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Gorgeous structure – simply stunning! The Taj Mahal represents the crown jewel of Indian architecture. A massive mausoleum built by a king and a queen, it has special significance, and Wow what a photo op!
Architectural Digest called out the “Most Beautiful Train Stations in the World.”
Of course, the amazing Grand Central Station in New York made the list.
On top of that, four…yes FOUR Union Stations across the USA made their list.
The Union Stations in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Denver, Colorado and Cincinnati, Ohio all made the list.
And while the beautiful white marble of the Taj Mahal makes it stand out, the white granite mined in Bethel Vermont used in the construction of the Washington, D.C. Union Station sets it apart as well.
Since the structures are all connected via the rail lines, if they count as a collection of structures, we’re going to give the railroad a slight edge for quantity over quality on this one, but it’s a tight one.
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We love Italy. We love Rome. Italy loves its trains – they can take you almost anywhere in the country. And the Italian countryside is as phenomenal a view from the train as its cities are.
The formula for the concrete used in the Colosseum remains a bit of a mystery. It has withstood the ravages of time better than modern concrete and serves a strong sense of national pride for the Italians.
We could refer back to the list of “Most Beautiful Train Stations” here, but let’s talk roundhouses since we’re looking at the Colosseum.
The Roundhouse at the B&O Museum in Baltimore, Maryland represents the best in terms of museum and preservation when it comes to the railroads. There are countless other gorgeous roundhouses in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other places around the country.
But in all fairness, none of the roundhouses has been subjected to the bombings of World War II and been subjected to the countless decades and centuries of neglect that the Colosseum has endured and persevered to rise above.
We’re decidedly biased, but still, we’re going to have to give this one to the existing Modern Wonder of the world
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Religion and trains – a couple of things that come first to mind when talking about Rio DeJaniero. The outstretched arms of the stone figure that surveys the entire metropolis sees all and sets the tone for the city filled with railway lines that are known for the crazy way people sometimes ride along on the passenger trains.
As far as the railroads go, we offer up the figure of “John Henry and the Coming of the Railroad” at New River Gorge. John Henry stands at the entrance of the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia. Truly a magnificent wooded mountain area, it's a landscape of beauty similar to the Brazilian capital city with high peaks and low valleys.
Among railroaders, the legend of John Henry stands tall. But when it comes to the “Coming of the Railroad” and the “Coming of Christ” and the longevity of one of these guy’s story over the other, there’s a pretty clear winner.
At the risk of angering the big guy, we’ll hand this one to the folks in Rio.
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Sitting at 7,972 feet above sea level, the Incan Citadel represents not only an impressive height but also an impressive engineering accomplishment in how it was built with dry-stone walls that use no mortar. If you’ve ever tried to breath at that sort of altitude, then you know executing that sort of architectural work without the benefit of modern machinery is astounding.
We railroad has a significant advantage in terms of the elevation attained with the Cumbres Pass on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad reaching an altitude of 10,015 feet giving it a clear win in terms of height.
Speaking of elevation, it's always nice to find a bench when hiking to those heights, and our Elevated Bench seemed like a nature piece to fit into the conversation here.
While we’d love to award the winner of this round based solely on heights attained, the reason for the Manchu Picchu inclusion on the list of Modern Wonders of the World is more than just attaining a height, it’s about the construction at that level.
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The architecture of this ancient city still inspires awe today. Carved directly into the stone walls, the site in Jordan reportedly served as the home to 30,000 involved in trade, like spices.
Creating new towns? Seriously, that’s a claim to fame to be a Wonder of the Modern World?!
The railroad has got that in spades. Among the cities that can trace some of their massive growth to the railroads, we have Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, New York, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas…and that’ just for starters!
The list of smaller towns created by the railroad goes well beyond this. Suppliers to the railroad even created towns like Pullman, Illinois with 1,000 homes built by industrialist George Pullman for the manufacturing of his famous railcars.
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The Mayan City on the Yucatan Peninsula features 365 steps – the number of days in the solar year. During the spring and fall equinoxes, a serpentine shaped shadow descends the stairs to meet with the head of a feathered serpent.
In front of that, there was a ritual ballgame played at the foot of the structure. Actually one massive field – part of a collection of thirteen fields!
Combining sports AND a penchant for incorporating symbolism into the architecture makes this one of the Seven Modern Wonders truly impressive!
But before we go awarding the win to the Mayans, let’s look at what the railroad brings to the table.
A 365-step snake twice a year?
Railroads snake through the landscape of the country every day, all day for 140,000 miles - a fact we’ve already mentioned. The railroads move a serpentine collection of railcars headed by locomotives and many of ours are two, three and four headed serpentine figures stretching well over a mile long!
Try and dismiss that from your nightmares.
Now consider this. The railroads can deliver you to a whole host of different ballgames throughout the country.
NFL, MLB, NHL, MLS – pick your sport and there is a train that goes to a stadium.
Not all of them mind you, but here’s a sample of NFL stadiums with some sort of railway access:
It’s all tied up.
So the final call is yours – what say you?
Does the US Railroad qualify to be one of the Seven Modern Wonders of the World?
If so, which one would you displace from the list and award it to the US Railroads?
Or do we simply add an eighth wonder to the list?
Let us know.
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