
The Great Model Train Robbery - axiomdata316
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-28/britain-s-great-model-train-robbery-remains-an-unsolved-crime
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AustinCarr
Hey y'all, this is the story's author here -- thanks for upvoting our magazine
feature. I hope you enjoy the story, and would also direct you to a video
version of the piece, which gives a wonderful sense of the passion these folks
have for their locos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWCUXoNZYio&t=](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWCUXoNZYio&t=)

This may be a good instance where additional online sleuthing could help solve
the crime. If you have any thoughts/tips, please just let me know! Happy also
to answer any questions you might have about the story. Thanks for reading!

Best, Austin

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olivermarks
As a Brit I found your article's tone and this video a little patronizing
Austin given the gravity of the situation. It's really worrying how people
just care about financial value of things to steal with apparently no thought
about what has been created and what it means to people. I'd quite like to see
the people that stole these found injured 'in a ditch somewhere' as well as
the trains
[https://youtu.be/MWCUXoNZYio?t=306](https://youtu.be/MWCUXoNZYio?t=306)

~~~
pbalau
Fully agree with your sentiment. I'm the unofficial bosun of my small sailing
club. It pisses me to no end when people are not properly taking care of our
boats, not clean them after use, not stowing the sails properly, not even
reporting the breakages inherent when so many people (we are renting the club
house and the boats to other clubs for costal sailing) use them, so we can
fix. 4 of these boats were with the club for 30+ years, helping teach
countless new sailors. The value for these boats is about 300 gbp (guessing
here) each. But the sentimental value is tremendous. There are pictures with
them almost my age. They pop up here and there on various bbc programmes. The
yellow genoa and deck, mark 2 Wayfarers, with the sail numbers 1,2,3 and 4
(these are not official) are now part of Brightlingsea. And to be honest,
there is no modern dinghy that can match our boats. Not even the 2 newer mk4s
we have.

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olivermarks
I restore old cars and make them perform better as an addiction/hobby. It's
discouraging the gradual decrease in people who know less and less about how
cars actually work and what it takes to get them working well and safely,
coupled with a rise in people whose only interest is how much what they look
at for 20 seconds is worth. The lower rung of that ladder is people who see
perceived value and then look for ways to steal it and resell it in whole or
part online which is alarmingly easy...drug addiction seems to fuel this
group, but I suspect the train thieves are a less doped out sophisticated
bunch who possibly are even stealing to order, as is often the case with car
thieves

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Theodores
In related news, a model railway (we are talking HO/OO gauge) was trashed a
few weeks before this incident. Rod Stewart - himself into trains - decided to
donate extremely generously to make things better:

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/20/rod-
stewart-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/20/rod-stewart-
donates-10000-model-railway-club-vandalised-market-deeping)

Regarding the actual story - where they could have done with Rod Stewart
donating - those trains really do take five to ten years to build. You can get
castings of some parts such as wheels but then you need to put them into the
lathe and do many other processes to get the finished article. Even with an
0-6-0 train that is a lot to get right.

Getting a boiler built and tested is a major landmark in the whole process.
There is as much to put together as on a full size 'prototype' train as on the
model version, some parts are actually harder to make in miniature.

Incidentally 'prototype' is the railway modelling term for a full size train.
This could definitely be used in software engineering, e.g. if making a MAME
video game cabinet the original from the 1980's could be the 'prototype'. If
getting things like the buttons right happens then they could be commended as
'prototypical'.

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AustinCarr
Totally agree -- I was immensely impressed by the engineering work that went
into each loco. Indeed, one of the trains stolen took ~25 years to
build/refine.

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joewee
One moral to this story, local police are usually useless when it comes to
investigating a crime. The two recent incidents I reported to the police,
which included a home robbery the police refused to investigate They cycled
through excuses for why they didn’t have to do anything. Pretty disappointing.

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EdwardDiego
> local police are usually useless when it comes to investigating a crime. The
> two recent incidents

Huge claim to make on a sample size of 2.

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girvo
Well I can back it up here in Australia, too. My car had its wheels stolen
while I was asleep. The cops did nothing other than give me a number for the
insurance company (despite the wheels being worth $4000 total).

Funnily, I got them back a few months later. $1.5 million in car parts was
found at a warehouse and the thieves were arrested — so I guess it’s not all
bad news. My wheels were incidental to the police however.

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klingonopera
Sad to hear it... especially here, where I'd like to remind everyone, that
(albeit probably universally inherent from curiosity and not tied to any
locality) modern, western hacker culture has its roots in model railroads[1]
at the MIT club in the 60s.

I hope those stolen Locos find their way back to their rightful owners, and
wish all those pursuing that goal all the luck they can receive.

[1]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/07/where-did-
hack...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/07/where-did-hacker-
culture-come-from)

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tomcam
Happened in Seattle a few months ago [https://komonews.com/news/local/thieves-
caught-on-video-stea...](https://komonews.com/news/local/thieves-caught-on-
video-stealing-mini-steam-train-in-west-seattle)

