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Paying a high price

I’m talking metal theft of course and while the price per tonne remains so high, there will always be those willing to risk life and limb to obtain their haul and take to a scrapyard to weigh in – no questions asked.

When Old Glory’s advertising man Andy found it more lucrative to take an old motor to the local scrapyard and weigh it in, rather than enter it into a car auction, I went along to give him a lift back and have a nosey.

We were behind a woman who had already driven on to the weighbridge, who then removed her shopping bags from the car, collected her money and walked out of the gate.

There was one sign on the entry gate, alluding to the fact that the scrapyard uses the ‘Smartwater’ process, something that Network Rail is trying hard to apply to cable to make it more difficult for thieves. Of course I cannot confirm if this is checked in reality at the scrapyard. Interestingly, our chosen scrapyard found that ‘our’ car weighed more today (and thus worth more) than it weighed the previous day at another scrapyard weighbridge. So the moral of that is to shop around among scrapyards if you’re weighing in material.

This year didn’t start well. Volunteers at the Transport Group at the Black Country Museum found that 500ft of tramway wire had been removed overnight, achieved by using a rope slung over the trolleybus running wire and attaching the same to a pick-up truck and ripping it out of its fittings. 120 man hours of voluntary labour has been expended so far to put this right.

Our sister magazines Railway Magazine and Heritage Railway have been full of stories all year about thefts from heritage railways of valuable (in terms of replacement value) parts from locomotives, signalling and permanent way items.

The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway suffered a £60,000 loss of brass, copper and bronze loco parts in July while the smaller Middleton Railway faced thousands of pounds of repairs after seven lengths of track were damaged, halting train services and therefore useful fares revenue.

Smaller thefts of tools and metalwork from sheds are becoming common and just last month a traction engine based on the Surrey/Sussex border had not just its worksplate or whistle nicked but its hub caps, clack valves, injectors, taps and pipework – a sure sign of a new level of audacity.

An e-petition being made to No 10 asked for changes in the law, such as cashless scrapyards (with invoices and names/addresses) and moves to make things more difficult for those that try and cash in. It closed in August and had attracted 16,206 signatures. Will this be enough to see an amendment to the Scrap Metal Merchants Act of 1964?

Colin Tyson
Editor