Rail business owner’s interest in graffiti as an art form leads to museum plans

By Julie Sneider, Senior Associate Editor 

Robert Hendrick knows what the rail industry thinks about graffiti on freight cars: It’s a safety concern. It’s a security problem. It’s trespassing. It’s vandalism.  

As the owner of Railroad Services of Tennessee, a rail construction and maintenance services company in Nashville, Hendrick understands why safety is the rail industry’s top priority. “I get it,” he says. 

He’s also founder of Rail Yard Studios, which uses reclaimed railroad steel and wood to design and create custom furniture and other architectural elements for homes and businesses. Founded in 2011, the firm’s desks and other furniture pieces can be found in railroad executive and corporate offices across the country. 

A few years ago, Rail Yard Studios came across a sample of rail graffiti painted on a section of an old freight car, which Hendrick thought about working into a piece of furniture.  

“The whole design aspect of it — that’s what drew me into the graffiti piece,” he says. “I thought, ‘This is cool, maybe we can incorporate it into something.’” 

Then he started looking into who created the image and what it was supposed to represent. Since then, Hendrick’s interest in rail graffiti has evolved into a personal mission aimed at preserving the subculture of the controversial art form and its creators. Today, Rail Yard Studios commissions artists to create their colorful work on steel canvases cut from old rail cars. Those pieces, which are sold in the Rail Yard Studios gallery, include works by artists known as ICHABOD, Troy Duff, TASK, Wanted1 and RASMO. 

Plans for the Graff Museum 

But Hendrick hopes to take his and the studio’s interest in graffiti a step further by opening what will be called the Graff Museum. Over the past five years, he and Rail Yard Studios have collected 30 to 50 pieces of graffiti that creators spray painted on freight cars stored in rail yards or along tracks. The pieces intended for the museum were harvested from short lines and scrap companies after the cars were retired from service, Hendrick says. 

With each piece, Hendrick does a deep dive into its origins and the person who created it. To date, he’s harvested work from artists who go by the names Paser, ICHABOD, TASK, TIMBER, ELI, ACET, GLUE, ONOROK, LACK, LEARN, ALKI and JEATMIX.  

A rail-car panel featuring the work of graffiti artist TASK. The piece incorporates many classic elements of graffiti tags, including bubbles, heavy 3-D lettering and halos over the signatures, according to Rail Yard Studios. Photo courtesy of Robert Hendrick, Rail Yard Studios

Hendrick recently wrote about the museum idea in a blog on Rail Yard Studios’ website. 

“The railroad haphazardly curates the largest gallery of modern art on a daily basis in the form of graffiti-covered freight cars,” the blog states. “We’re aiming to be a little more thoughtful in our approach to the preservation and presentation of the freight graffiti culture.” 

The response to the blog? “We got a lot of feedback from both sides of the fence,” Hendrick says. Some comments from the blog’s readers were positive, but others were less so, including some that used profane language to express what they think about glorifying rail graffiti in a museum. 

“There is a distaste for it because of the vandalism and the safety issues,” Hendrick says. “And as a railroad company, we recognize that. At the same time, the art of it is undeniable.” 

Sometimes railroaders soften their opinions of graffiti as an art form once Hendrick has a chance to explain its history and his interest in it, he says. 

“They’ll tell us how much they appreciate knowing about the art aspect of it,” he says. “They don’t appreciate the vandalism, but they appreciate the art.” 

Railroads: Graffiti a safety, security problem 

There’s no question rail graffiti is controversial. The sight of it on a rail car exposes the fact that a trespasser has entered railroad property and spent enough time there to spray-paint a design or message on a rail car. That scenario is both a safety and a security issue.  

It’s also expensive to remove when it occurs. Nationwide, graffiti vandals cause millions of dollars of damage to railroad property every year, according to the Alaska Railroad Corp., which reported a local spate of it that occurred in 2018.  

“Not all graffiti is artistic and may even be considered offensive,” Alaska Railroad officials wrote in a company newsletter at the time. “As talented as some graffiti artists may be, they put themselves at risk and cost the railroad and other entities money in order to clean up the markings.” 

Railroads continue to view graffiti as a problem and try to stop it, says the Association of American Railroads (AAR). 

“Working with law enforcement officers, railroads continue to focus efforts on preventing such actions that threaten safety,” an AAR spokesman told RailPrime in an email. 

Hendrick says he understands the railroads’ concerns about graffiti, and acknowledges that all of it is vandalism. 

“What’s of importance or of interest is more subjective,” he says. The “quality” of the graffiti — such as its design and how well the artist controlled the can of spray-paint when creating it — helps determine whether it’s of interest to him as a collector, he says. 

“Also, the story that goes with it is key, which is why we make an effort to connect with the artists and get their stories behind each piece,” he adds. 

Hendrick hopes a museum will help dispel misconceptions that all or most rail graffiti is territory tagging by gang members.  

The stuff he collects and intends to display in the museum is not created by gang members, he says. Many of the graffiti artists he’s gotten to know range in age from their mid-30s to mid-50s and grew up in hip-hop culture. They’ve told him they created their work for the thrill of it, to tell a personal story or to “blow off steam,” he says. 

“They want to work with a freight car that will roll across the country and be seen,” Hendrick explains.  

One of the first pieces he acquired was created by TASK. When Hendrick contacted him to verify that it was his work, TASK explained where he was when he created it, what he was thinking at the time and why the color scheme and design — which included drips of paint — turned out the way it did.  

“A lot of detail goes into documenting each piece, putting it into perspective and knowing the importance from an art and culture standpoint,” Hendrick says. 

For now, the collected images are being stored in a building close to Rail Yard Studios, which has brought in a structural engineering firm to determine the best methods for display and storage. Hendrick hopes the museum will be ready to open in two to three years.  

In the meantime, he’s happy to show the collection to people who stop by and ask to see it. 

“We [at Rail Yard Studios] went from being outsiders unaware of this culture to becoming deeply ingrained in understanding these people and their motivations,” Hendrick says. “They’re an amazing group of people from many different angles.”