Addicted to Steel

For me, painting trains came naturally. As a boy growing up I spent my weekends out with my mates getting into places that we shouldn't have been. Disused buildings, abandoned warehouses and train tracks became our playground. The one thing that really fascinated me more than any other place was the train yard that backed on to my housing estate. Night after night I would hear the drivers shunt the trains around until they came back in to service the next morning. I would often stare out of my bedroom window and listen to the trains tick and groan. It was like the steel giants were alive. Some nights I used to sneak in the yard and climb up into the carriages. There was something very tranquil about being in an empty carriage listening to the train groan. I would sit there thinking about the passengers who had been on the train earlier and try to imagine places they had been going to. I could imagine how the packed carriages with workers looked. I could smell the dirty cloth seats and the pungent axle grease seeping up through the floor. It was fuelling my imagination every day and although I didn't know it at the time, teaching me important lessons which in time I would use very often. As a youngster I got chased out of the yard a few times by the track workers so my secret visits would never last long. This gave me an early experience of what would follow on in the future - . This story is the first of its kind to be written in depth about a subculture that spans across the globe and involves criminal damage on an unprecedented scale. It chronicles the testing times I endured and the places I travelled to. For over a decade I was London's most wanted graffiti vandal and I also evaded capture in many other cities too. Transport for London had new security measures in place with double fences, razor wire, electric sensors, CCTV and regular patrols by security guards. Writers were saying the yards were too hard, things couldn't be done and the risks were too great with heavier penalties and prison sentences being handed out. To me it wasn't important. All I wanted to do was paint trains and I didn't think or care about the consequences. I wanted to paint my name as much as possible on as many trains in as many countries as I could. The graffiti phenomenon had exploded across the globe and I wanted to be a part of it. Every city in Europe had vandals painting trains at night and I wanted to do my part for London. It was all out warfare on the rail network and I just couldn't help myself. What followed was to be London's worst nightmare. I came in peace and left it in pieces. I was like a junkie, I was addicted to steel.