There have been some occasions of organized looting in the past, but no reports of hoards of machine gun toting Mexican's (today's obvious choice of culprit.....?) somehow stopping trains in the desert is a new one.

I've seen cars, trailers, and containers broken into, but it was more a hit and miss target of opportunity, since they don't have a manifest to determine which containers hold toilet paper and which ones hold I-pads, and it wasn't that common.

So, stories of hoards of machine gun toting truck bound "Mad Max" "Mexcans" stopping trains sure sounds like some pretty amazingly hyperbolic rhetoric, at least from my experience.

Theft of cargo is and was a problem, even back when we had boxcars, too. There used to be special agents with us on Alameda spotting carloads of cigarettes in the early 70's. But, my favorite theft story from my SP days was that of a clearly an "inside job", with someone routing a car of liquor to a team track, where, by the time it came up missing, and the special agents found it, it was empty.

My experience with post 9/11 security and liability are a better fit with the increased levels of enforcement on and around RR's these days. RR's haul stuff that can be dangerous and are at risk of acts from vandalism to outright terrorism that can have serious consequences, so the levels of security on RR's like elsewhere in our lives is taken way more seriously these days, than it was in the days of our carefree youth, when we all hung out by the tracks, pretty much free to roam, and largely ignored.

I've never had much a problem with this new security, when observing or photographing trains, as long as I'm not trespassing, and acting in a safe manner. And, every dufus I've seen who had a problem, was doing something stupid. Or in one case on Cajon that I personally witnessed, there was a problem, when the individual decided to tell the special agent what he thought of her telling him to get off the tracks, and that definitely didn't go well........for him, since his "bad attitude" got him the citation he deserved.