Great Western Coffee Shop

Monday morning I was on Warminster station collecting some tickets when a 166 rolled in after reversing just past the station. The centre coach was liberally daubed with spray paint graffiti. Normally, I would have said to myself "isn't that awful" along with a feeling of anger/disgust/despair towards those responsible.

None of those passed through my mind - my first and only thought was "that train just about sums up the quality of the GWR rail service along this route nowadays"............... There must be many others who use this route who must think that every day !  Isn't that an awful frame of mind to be driven into ?

The Channel 5 program 'Paddington' showed the cleaning of carriages to remove graffiti.  I wonder why yours appeared in public.

............on their performance elsewhere I am tempted to say:  "because they don't care !"

Or - perhaps - because the didn't discover the problem in time to clean up the train and had to take a decision between running it in that condition or not at all.  It may not just be the physical time to clean - there's also the need to have the people and materials available.

Anything with offensive graffiti won’t go into traffic, but if, for example, it’s painted overnight in Westbury yard with just a load of nonsense then, as a passenger, I would be mightily peeved if my train got cancelled as a result of it needing to be treated first thing.

There is unlikely to be any time during the day to remove it, without cancelling trains again, so it usually waits for the next night.  Very rare to see anything in passenger use going around for more than a day without being treated.

Where and when does the graffiti get applied?  I'd guess it's most likely to happen when trains are stabled at night.  Which then begs the question - don't they use CCTV to catch the culprits if they know where it's going to happen?  Isn't that going to be a lot cheaper than the £4 million I think they quoted in the Paddington programme?

The graffiti problem seems to be getting worse and worse on the railways, especially around Bristol.  The number of hours some 'artists' must have spent within just feet of operational railway lines must be considerable.

I think people may be missing the point I was making - I was not complaining about the graffiti as such, it's a fact of modern times. I certainly was not suggesting that the train should have been taken out of service.
 If anything, I was "complaining" about my own response to the graffiti. The "new" trains we have had foisted on us are well past their sell by date, the seating is far below the standard of the "old" trains. Earlier mentions of refurbs & 4 abreast seating have vanished. When the train in question arrived I was nowhere as upset/shocked by its appearance as I should have been because I have now been conditioned to expect a shabby, grubby vehicle (when I see the front of a 165/166 appearing) which we appear to be going to be stuck with for many years to come. The graffiti just seemed to "go" with the rest of the train and the service it was giving ...........
A Rolls Royce covered in graffiti is still a Rolls - an old banger covered in graffiti comes across as an even older old banger covered in graffiti..........no one gives it a second look of disapproval because it is what they have come to expect.

I think Clan Line's point is well made. Our expectation now is for second-rate rolling stock on this line, and if anything better arrives, it is far more notable.

I'm not that concerned about graffiti myself, though there are obviously limits to what is acceptable. If people find the notion of graffiti a problem, have they traveled in France, where you can often see huge numbers of carriages lined up on lines completely covered in graffiti.

I get far more upset if a train hasn't been cleaned outside, so that you make your journey straining to look out of filthy windows. That has happened quite a few times to me this year, and I can't understand how some trains can be left to get quite so bad (they haven't been at times when the weather would cause them to be that dirty, so must just be long-term build-up of dirt on their outside).

Didn't one of the guys cleaning it make a comment about the paint being on there for a number of days?