You should see the light they give off when they finally do fry and short out.......or when someone decides to use the space above the grids to hide in.....not a good idea....

Had it happen on Beaumont once, and thought we'd been hit by lightning......lit up the whole desert around us and of the base of Mt. San Jacinto in a big flash. So the hoghead just put a bigger set under the train, and we went on down to Indio just fine. The grids on the unit that "flashed over" were toast.... I seem to recall that it was possibly from windblown debris getting caught in the grids, as that was one of the most common causes of shorting out, or burning them up.

And, since there was room in the space above the grids on some units, as I recall, one or two folks somehow thought this might be a good place to hide, maybe to hobo, or jump the border. It wasn't.