And then to the more exact part of the trainism of Bordeaux.
The trains in Bordeaux started to get hit rather late – at the end of 1993. Main scenes for trains were Paris-area (including also subway) and the south of France: Toulouse, Montpellier, Nims and Bordeaux, which had by 1995 a solid reputation for the quality of its trains (quantity has not so much output).
Sobre and Amer were the first to paint panels on SNCF (the transit authorities) in BDX around November 1993 but the boom for trains increased more in summer 1994 when also writers like Soket, Moske, Dock and IBM/MTM-crew reinforced with the visit of Pum Uno from Paris, which leads to the creating of PMG-crew in August 1994. During that summer Sobre and Amer also visited Copenhagen and its famous train yards. The more the year got near to its end, the more people were hitting trains: on weekends (night times of course) there were sometimes over 10 people concentrating on the painting of end to ends. However, most of the trains were buffed the next morning and night photos remained as the only tangible proofs of such pieces.
Moreover Bordeaux doesn’t have a logical center (periphery trainsystem apart from a line corsson Cauderon, Merginac, Hessac and Tolouse, most of the transportation system relying on France’s greatest bus system (except the one from Paris). That’s why the trains that are painted are just long distance trains or TER-trains linking France’s 23 regions.
Amer and Sobre once again hit the TGV, the pride of French railway system CSNCF.
The painting of trains in Bordeaux was then very easy, you just needed to sneak silently into the huge central train yard and find a cool spot to paint, but you naturally had to take care of the transit workers.
But in 1995 things changed, the transit authorities found such painting disturbing to the train schedules (a train being hit was supposed to be immediately buffed, although several writers reported to have seen trains rolling by).
Bart and Mase were caught on one January morning while taking pictures of their pieces by a special transit graffiti police which has files filled with graffiti pictures. But they were only sentenced to pay for the cleaning of the trains.
Since the train painting in this particular depot became too risky, writers like Sobre, Amer, Pum, etc. started to paint train yards a little far from Bordeaux like Periqueux (120km from BDX), Arcachon (60km) or Le Verdon. It concentrated mainly on TER, but other trains or freight trains also drew attention.
Recently Ashet, Rekme, Kerm, Bugs and Barutel got caught which just strengthens the Transit Police’s determination to keep on with their jobs.
But the Bordeaux train painters will hopefully stay one step ahead and be clever enough to avoid further confrontations with that fucking Transit Police.
A new wave of graffiti on trains has already started to appear in Bordeaux, with young writers, hopefully they will keep on painting hard steel to make the SNCF’s dull trains look like a “rolling gallery”!
But that’s it… in the next issue there will be a much more detailed story about Bordeaux, featuring interviews, history of BDX, focus on Bordeaux walls… and of course pictures.
More related photos on the dedicated page of all the foreign graffiti included in the Radioactive magazines. | Radioactive Crew, 2026