trainspotting (runners)

always a pleasure to find this blog pimped out or bigged up somewhere nice. very much the case today with venerable scrapbook-cum-blog Hurt You Bad using a number of this is my england pix of FIRST CRAPITAL CONNECT choo-choos bedecked with RUNNERS:

... this is in the wake of the Back Ya Mouf mob doing the same... feelin the love here... 

for the uninitiated, a RUNNER, in this context, is a piece of graffiti seen by the public on a MOVING train. back in the late 1980s, the combined forces of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) had ensured that no graffitied trains were in service across the big apple's subway system. this policy has since been copied elsewhere, with london underground reportedly working to prevent any illicitly decorated rolling stock from being used. if they can't immediately get the graffiti cleaned off of a carriage, the story goes, the tube supremos take it out of service. perhaps the same usually goes for FCC, but Hurt You Bad and The London Vandal have both noticed a lot more runners of late on that part of our SE England railway network and others besides.  the latter blog theorises that this is about the olympic games - i.e. with tourists in town and claims made for the efficacy of our public transport, the train operators have let stock covered in graffiti out of the depot rather than take it out of use and thereby cause delays. as henry the mild-mannered janitor used to say, "could be". tho that said, this is my england has been spotting this stuff fairly regularly since as long ago as november 2011.