This is what happens when you take steel.

Another catch.

So you caught them!!!!!!!! Now what are you going to do to them?

Give them a get out of jail free card?

I have had so much stolen from me in the last 40 years that I could buy a new home, but not one party has ever been put in jail, paid any restution or any of my property returned to me.

The most recent case happened to me on a job site in another state. I know who stole the material, reported it to the police, but they would not arrest him. The prosecutor has the case, but will not return my phone calls or talk to me. They say it is an open case and they can not talk to me. He stole the material from me.

What has happened to the trolley is a shame, people have worked hard to restore that equipment.

I was involved with railroad museums years ago, but no more.

Now, what I am going to say, does not include all groups, but the largest amount of property stolen from me, was by a railroad museum, then sold across state lines and is now on the property of another railroad museum.

When I first started with a railroad museum, there was a young man that when ever he showed up at the site to work, he brought something with him. Many items came from railroads. I ask him how he obtained these items. He opened the trunk of his car and there were 4 to 6 hardhats from different railroads. He would put one on, go on the property, acted like he belonged there, took what he wanted and left.

I went to diner one day with a group from another railroad museum. They openly told me how they got a number of their track tools. One night they were eating at the same place, when they left, there were 2 railroad hi-rail trucks parked out back. The crews were inside eating supper. These guys pulled their truck up behind the railroad trucks and helped themselves.

The people who steal are not all homeless or on drugs.

We all have to watch out for one another, it is not just a one way street. Boards of these groups need to question material brought to the mueseums as well.

The best the police can do is cite them for trespassing. But in reality the best we can hope for is that these people do not come back and move on to steal from others. We also get this nice collection of photos that hopefully will serve as a deterrent. I'm thinking of posting these pics at the various locations where people either come over or through the fences onto the property.

The only true defense is to harden our facilities to physically keep the people out. Once the damage is done, even if we catch them red handed, we are still out whatever they destroyed. Cameras, alarms, lights, apprehensions etc. will not prevent the damage, they will just give you pretty pictures such as mine to post on forums!

One thing that may help is having a security system with cameras that can provide real time video of your property right to your smart phone. When something trips the system you can then watch the crime in progress as you high tail it down to the museum to catch them in the act.

As I discussed in the other thread, if you take the attitude that the system doesn't work for you, then the system won't work for you.

Worse, it turns you into a "doormat", people come to learn they can get away with stealing from you, so they steal from you rather than from someone with teeth and claws.


A memorable scene in "Breaking Bad" is when a drug distributor tells the antihero "I like doing business with family men. They have collateral."

Railfans with assets have too much to lose by stealing, so their assets (and indeed, their family) are collateral. If his past thefts put his family in jeopardy, if his lawyer bills were breaking his back financially, if the stress of criminal accusations was driving his wife to divorce him... well, then he would not steal again, would he?

You need to start using the legal system in a self-service mode. Lawsuits are the key to this. File them without hesitation. There's an art to this that I won't get into, but the upshot is you use the discovery power of a lawsuit to upturn a lot of rocks. Think somebody knows something, take their deposition. Subpoena what the police have. If you have evidence of a possible location, go straight to court to have the sheriff seize the property while ownership is litigated. The fact of the sheriff finding it is also usable in a criminal trial. This sort of thing has a "shock and awe" effect on the landscape. Use this for good, not evil, because evil can backfire badly especially if I find out lol!

I won't lie, it'll cost you a few grand if you do the bulk of the research and legwork yourself. A lot more if you hire lawyers to "do it all for you". But a) you'll have a heck of a lot of fun, and b) the thefts will stop dead.

No Hot Metal was posting stuff from his experiences and him catching people. I don't think the CT scrappers have been apprehended yet but let's hope they are.

There's a very good reason that, when you're in extremely rural areas in counties that are larger than many states, property owners are armed. I've seen, firsthand, the kind of things that go on, or are at least threatened/promised, when nefarious trespassers are corralled in territory where the cell phone signals may be nonexistent and the sheriff's deputies an hour or several away.

And, you know, the evidence may be anecdotal, but it appears the "problems" of this ilk are less common out there in the "boondocks" where this is the case than in urban areas......

Robert,

You take the lawyer's approach but you have experience with it. You may also have that "few grand" at your disposal and the time that it takes to do all the legwork. For many of us, the legal system is a foreign land, and before we could use it to our advantage we would have to first educate ourselves on how it functions.

If you will not get into the art of filing lawsuits, then all you have said here is worthless. What we need is instructions about how to use the legal system to our advantage, not a chastising for not doing so.

Why withhold the knowledge that you have that will actually have an impact in combating metal thefts?

The solution might be to fence in museum property and employ the services of a big, loyal dog in the evening. The dog doesn't have to be a liability either. You give a well mannered dobie, shepard, or big mutt, a home. Give him love, praise, food and water. All the dog needs to do is show up at the fence. Signs posted on the grounds or along the fence indicating the presence of a dog cause hesitation. I once interviewed a convict from the state prison who told my students, "If there was a dog in the house, I turned around and left."
There is a popular sign being marketed these days that says, "My dog can make it to the road in 2.3 seconds. Can you?"

I realize this is not the universal answer, but it works.

In reality the chances of catching them are slim, unless they come back for more.

Another museum was lucky that an anonymous call to the police was made by a passerby and a scrapper was caught in the act. Unfortunately catching someone there at the time of theft is rarely the case.

Same as when I had an individual arrested several months ago, just happened to drive by like I do weekly to check on things and surprised to find someone inside the fenced in yard. I did not confront them, just drove by and called the police, the intruder ignored me which actually helped as he wasn't spooked and stayed put until the police showed up and they found him still in there staring at a stored locomotive. Charged with simple tresspass as he wasn't caught cutting the fence or actually touching anything. Coincidence or not, that same specific locomotive suffered a good amount of damage weeks later from scrappers. Now that museum has lost a good stored loco that was in need of minor repairs to being more of a project to bring it back into service. Even if the person was caught doing this the reality of getting the money out of them (restitution?) to fix said loco would likely never happen. It still comes down to the museum having to dip into it's funds to repair the loco when the time comes to put it back into service and having us volunteers spend our time doing the repairs instead of working on other projects.

Unforentely the CT Trolley museume is a huge property with a few miles of track and various sheds along the way so fenceing it in would be next to impossable. Never mind maintaining
that fence.

Huge property it may be but fencing individual buildings with a tall fence or razor wire is a necessary evil, either that or you remove the fittings before someone else does and store them somewhere, were the cars in regular service or stored?
I know how awful it would be if 57 lost any of her fittings and replacing them with modern replicas just aint the same. The dog idea is good too, gets some rescue dogs a good home, our two pitbulls look and sound mean but would roll over and let anyone pet them, its the looks that count though.
In the UK our restoration facility was hit by thieves, they climbed in through a hole in the window on the seawrd side and stole model trains we had there. They came back too the next night but werent prepared for the trip wire the sledge hammer and a railway detonator.......they didnt come back ...probably the ringing in the ears deterred them.

Mike Pannell
Cheyenne

We repair our 1700 feet of chain link fence on a weekly basis. Chain link is no match for a $6.00 pair of Harbor Freight wire cutters.

Interior electrified fencing. If they get past the outer wall, there is no liability, they are fully trespassing once they gain entry. Of course, we know this will never happen, but its a nice thought. Fry the bastards in their place!

I heard on the radio last week that SEPTA (Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) budgets a half million dollars per year for copper replacement. Its a well known fact that they keep the overhead powered up even on unused trolley lines, as a deterrent, but even then copper gets stolen.