Re: Help sought to catch copper signal wire thieves

[Chris French <cfrench@starwon.com.au>]

Maurie Daly wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2000 23:41:55 GMT, dbromage@fang.omni.com.au (David
> Bromage) wrote:
> 
> >Police have once appealed for public help to catch thieves stealing copper
> >signal wire in the West Wimmera. They say five kilometres of the wire,
> >used to relay signals for the rail link between Adelaide and Melbourne was
> >stolen from between the Leeor and Fedders Roads near Serviceton on Sunday.
> >
> >http://www.abc.net.au/news/regionals/westvic/monthly/reghor-21nov2000-2.htm
> 
> This sounds a bit dodgy to me .
> Removing 5 kms of aerial line along a railway line , between 1AM and
> 2AM in the morning would take quite a large number of people with
> ladders, lighting equipment, vehicles etc.
> It would also need people with some knowledge of railway timetables
> ,so that the theiving could be done when there were no trains around.
> Also, what on earth would you do with the wire?
> Copper wire is relatively soft,and doesnt make good fencing wire so
> its unlikely that its local farmers doing this.
> 
> MD

Dodgy yes, but not impossible. We had the same problem when I was
working as a Signalman at "Midsig" here in Perth. The 'culprits' were
VERY well organised and were only seen once or twice (by non-railway
onlookers). They had a sophisticated and well organized setup in place.
They also knew EXACTLY which pair of wires (of multiple wire pair runs)
to leave until last on each wire run. They would cut all but that pair,
roll them up their 'harvest' and then cut the last pair, bundle it up
and were 'off' before the alarm sounded - yes, we had an alarm on the
active pair! 

It is believed that the gang was eventually caught, hence all the detail
above. Personally, I was glad they caught the *^##ers, because on one
night shift I had to introduce Pilot Key Working on every section of
single line between Kwinana and Coolup/Calcine in the South West..! With
the move over here to Train Orders on a lot of country lines and the use
of Microwave data transmission hopefully this won't happen again in a
hurry. Good hunting troops...

CF
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