I was just perusing my hometown newspaper, The Kentucky Standard when I found this article:

http://www.lcni5.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?091 ... 4091091015

Reading the article it said that their bail was $50,000 each with conditions.
Part of the "conditions" would be to put those two idiots out there with a bucket of tie plugs and spike mauls and make THEM respike the rail (with professional supervision of course) then retamp and relign everything MANUALLY!!
It worked with prison road gangs before!!
Just my humble opinion!
Bruce Pierce

At the risk of being accused of thread-drift, all I can say is that it really didn't work, we still have crime.

Didn't say it will solve ALL the worlds crime problems, but it WILL get the KRM labor they need to fix what was destroyed without taxing their budget as much and MIGHT cause THESE bright fellows to think about doing the same thing again, at LEAST in the rail preservation community.
Bruce

Be sure to send a big thankyou card, or better yet a plaque of appreciation, to the police department and the officers who caught "Bob and Misty" in the act! A letter to the editor praising the police actions might be a good idea too.

While a lot of work will be needed to repair the damage, at least the material is accounted for and nobody got hurt.

Steve Hunter
Cardinal, Ontario

Of course it will be several months at least before the legal system runs it's course but I would be interested to know if the people are found guilty and if so what is the sentence
Tom Cox

Doesn't this fall under some of the recent Homeland Security legislation, with some pretty harsh penalities? It can be viewed as an act of sabotage. Repair/restitution and twenty years in prison, with no chance of parole, sounds about right to me.

What amazes me is how hard these idiots work to get a few pieces of scrap. I had a signal maintenance contract for a local railroad, and vandals are constantly stealing the copper signal bonds. They're about 5 inches long, 3/8 copper wire and welded on so they're a PITA to get off. But they still crawl around in gravel at night and do it. I don't know what copper goes for these days, but they can't be worth too much!

Meanwhile, if you offered the same tweaker a good paying job, one that was probably less work than crawling around on pointy rocks for a few bits of copper, they wouldn't take it. WTF?

Worth about $3 a pound, last I heard.

Not the first either. Vancouver historic trolley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OrjwKT2hBY
(of course, they soon got their whole rail line stolen.)

Copper is getting silver's problem. It's a better conductor than others but the cost is getting high. I don't think BART uses copper at all. The 3rd rail is a steel i-beam with aluminum laminated into the webs. They figured out if they use 132 pound rail instead of their usual 112, they don't need ground feeder.

I am getting $3.25/lb. for no. 1 copper right now.

I'm just extatic that the newspaper reporter got the terminology of the track materials correct (spikes, tie plates and anchors, Oh MY!). You can count on most journalists to butcher it!

Rob Gardner

dumb thieves, what do they know, but it would have been better to pull every other spike and plate, that would leave the track still secure, but not as safe even.

Don't get any ideas you wannabe's out there, its a trick I do in HO modeling hand laid track, you can get away with spiking every 4th-6th tie and still run, I have seen some really bad track with trains running on them and ties/track not looking good.

Ohyeh, make these guys (or guy/gal) and fix the track they ruined, then they have to volunteer at the museum for life, on the track inspection repair crew.

<At the risk of being accused of thread-drift, all I can say is that it really didn't work, we still have crime.>

No, it doesn't deter crime, but it sure can get a lot of track work done without killing off your volunteers.

I'm a native of Nelson County, Kentucky (where KRM is located) and was a volunteer and board member there before I made the big move to St. Louis six years ago.

I have to give a hats off to both the police and the Nelson County Commonwealth's Attorney (prosecutor) for taking these issues seriously. Also, a new District court judge who came into office about 10 or so years ago really helped. KRM was subject to a rash of vandalism when they first moved to their present location about 20 years ago, and it took some time, but the local police, judges, and prosecutors are now taking the issue seriously. Even some of the caught youth responsible for vandalism were sentenced to community service at KRM, repairing the damage they did, and other work.

We had a pair of former Milwaukee Road coaches built for the 1948 Olympian Hiawatha, number 484 and 485 that were victim to extensive copper theft. The police caught the parties responsible and I believe they were sentenced to some real prison time. After arrest, they also had the same high cash-only bonds with conditions that the present alleged thieves have. They spent a lot of time in jail just awaiting trial. I'm also thankful that someone took the time to call the police about the suspicious activity. Had it not been detected until it was too late, the results might have been disasterous.

The bottom line with all of this is to develop a good relationship with your police/prosecutors.

I don't know if it is wise to have a thief come back and fix what they stole/broke. The more time they are on the property, the more time they have to case what other stuff can be easily stolen. Even if they don't take anything, they could always spread the word on the street.