UK: £100,000 damage in wake of rail cable theft

[John Ashworth]

£100,000 damage in wake of rail cable theft

Dick Murray, Transport Correspondent
London Evening Standard
21 Nov 2011

Thieves ripped down more than half a mile of overhead power cables causing major disruption to services into Liverpool Street station.

The thieves struck early yesterday at Silver Street near Broxbourne and stole more than 1,000 metres of 25,000 volt cable. Lorries would have been required to carry out the theft.

Network Rail engineers attended and found chaos at the site of the crime. As the live cables had crashed down they entangled with signal cables causing track-side fires. Signals were fused, turning red and stopping services.

Engineers worked all day, overnight and into today to restore services. The disruption hit National Express East Anglia and Stansted Express.

Trains had to be manually signalled through a level crossing at Broxbourne. Trains between Cambridge and Stansted Airport and Liverpool Street were ordered to run at reduced speed, adding half an hour to journeys, and services between Hertford East and Liverpool Street were delayed.

The cost of repair is estimated at £100,000, well in excess of what the thieves will get for the stolen cables. An NR spokesman said: "The thieves caused a huge amount of damage.

"There was a safety risk both to the thieves and our staff at the scene."

Transport minister Norman Baker will appear before the Commons transport committee next week to discuss the increasing amount of cable theft hitting rail services.

British Transport Police figures show a seven-fold increase of cable thefts and related incidents on the Tube and a 350 per cent rise across the rail network during the last five years. NR reported 1,000 individual "attacks" this year alone.

BTP and rail authorities have launched a campaign stepping up police patrols and the use of helicopters with "spy in the sky" equipment to catch culprits in the act.

Andy Trotter, BTP chief constable, said: "Cable theft is a spectrum of crimes - at one end the opportunist who steals a few metres to make some quick cash, at the other there are links to organised crime."

Bob Crow, the RMT leader, said: "We agree we need more track patrols.

"But that means reinstating the 1,400 posts deleted by government cuts and stopping the nonsense of further job reductions."