Saturday, April 23, 2011

Brazen Burglary?

More like ferrous! The headline says it all: Indiana police investigate theft of railroad tracks.

Times are indeed tough -- even if you have enough heavy machinery and sheer effrontery steal railroad tracks.

11 comments:

og said...

Damn, I've hunted that property plenty of times, and I'm quite familiar with those tracks. The game wardens had to be asleep, because you could hear any heavy machinery from the checkstation.

Carteach said...

This, of course, was predicted in 'Atlas Shrugs'.

Retardo said...

The cops released a composite sketch of a suspect.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Retardo +1.

I LOL'ed.

Ed Rasimus said...

Do you take your stolen rails to a fence? Or hold them for ransom from Amtrak?

Guffaw in AZ said...

When I was a kid, say 5 or 6, someone mentioned a Ferris Wheel.
I assumed they meant ferrous, as it was made of iron.
Yeah, I was a little geek.
(true story)

Frank W. James said...

Roberta, how about copper wire? I just talked to a guy who knows a farmer up by the South Bend area who just lost a QUARTER MILE OF HEAVY COPPER WIRE!

It was buried underground to power his center pivot irrigation system. How did they steal it?

They cut it at the ground transformer and hitched a pick-up truck to it less than a 1/8th of a mile from his home and DROVE AWAY!!!

Pulled it all out of the ground and down the road. 3rd such theft recently, insurance no longer covers it. They were pissed...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Anonymous said...

Well, 100 or so pounds a foot, 200 bucks for a ton of scrap metal... It adds up pretty quick.

Jim

Roberta X said...

Frank, they got after copper in a major way.

In addition to the Darwin Award applicant who tried to steal a LIVE power drop this winter, any air-conditioned facility without a human presence is liable to find itself lacking cooling; last summer, one of the local FM stations wet off the air and when the guys drove out to "reset the transmitter," they found it had overheated -- and all the outside copper tubing and heat exchangers were gone!

Eric Wilner said...

Obviously, it was carried off by Dr. Chicago's super ants.

Old Sarge said...

"Steal track! Steel track!" , George make joke.
This obligatory George of the Jungle reference brought to you by Ol Sarge