He musta slipped into my basement overnight…
Herby ?
Looks more like a Pedro to me…
Brian,
Do you still have the link to the car barcodes (precursor to the AEI, I forgot the name). I recall someone had developed a program for making the decals, but I lost the link some how.
Craig
The ‘Herby’ grafitti was around in the 70’s and early 80’s. He did it with the ballast limestone or something like that. There are a lot of pictures from that era that show a herby tag. There was so little grafitti on railcars back then., the Herby’s stood out…kinda like the older ‘Kilroy’ tags
Craig, Burl did the ACI program you’re asking about.
His link was to download the program: http://burlrice.com/LS/ACI.exe
So you may have it on yur computer…i know I do.
Thanks Brian. I always forget the various names of the scanner developments. I think that between the ACI and the AEI there was another one right?
Got it saved in a safe place now!
Craig
Brian;
Think it was actually a railroad employee, specifically a car inspector, named Herb doing the drawings. It was his personal signature showing that he had inspected that car, hence the date.
Here is what I could find using the search “Herbie railroad car inspector” on Bing:
"The Herbie drawing began appearing first as graffiti art on freight cars - a large number of these being owned by the Mopac. The Mopac later adopted the art for use with a safety slogan on a boxcar stationed out of Little Rock. It is still in use on the Union Pacific R.R. today.
"Herbie Meyer was the original artist behind the fellow enjoying his siesta under a sombrero resting against a palm tree drawings. The name Herbie followed by a date was always under him. Herbie worked as a switchman for a yard and transfer company, other than Missouri Pacific, somewhere in the St Louis area, possibly the TRRA (one story has it that he was a switchman on the Wiggins Division of the TRRA in St Louis).
"He died December 9th, 1995, when he was in his eighties. He is now a legend in the graffiti community, as more and more practitioners are researching the history of railroad graffiti by railworkers and hobos, and they are finding his prodigious output of drawings on the railcars had an apparent omnipotent presence in vast railroad network for over three decades.
“A story that appeared in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineer’s Newspaper back in the early 80’s told that Herbie was a Car Inspector that worked in the St Louis, MO area for either the Terminal Railroad Association of St Louis or Alton & Southern, but I cannot remember which one it was for sure now. He retired around 1980.”
Don’t know how good all the facts are, but you get the idea.
Hope this helps,
David Meashey
Neat story. Thanks Dave!