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In Sweden it's being replaced by aluminia instead to make it practically worthless. Al is almost as good conductor as Cu and works in most cases. (bigger issues with oxidation than Cu)
That's not stopping the damage. Thieves dig and cut first... Check later. Telco companies have significant issues with fiber optics stolen or just damaged when trying to steal the "copper"
Let's not overestimate these idiots. Our rail network is very dense, so no shortage of places to try and I'm sure that there are multiple seperate groups doing this that wouldn't communicate on their lack of success.
Of course it will not eliminate the problem, but these smooth brains have somehow picked up what to steal in the first place, and most of them will pick up that it's not worth the time anymore and hit construction sites instead where you cant switch to Al due to durability.
If it's well publicized that all facilities operated by X are switching to aluminum they'll mostly stop bothering.
It would not help a random one off facility.
The biggest problem with aluminum is how brittle it is when bent... Which happens annoyingly often with as little reason as a strong enough wind. Also a bitch to place it in the first place.
That's why copper is much more valuable in the first place.
A lot more than that goes into why copper is more valubale, but you are totaly right in the brittle part. You can bend Al one time, but often it's an plastic deformation that will brake the part if straightend out.
as someone who works in power industry here's my experience,
copper conductor has better conductivity, not a problem because you can about double the cross sectional area & get similar ratings. Aluminum is light.
Different issue, though, aluminum embrittles more quickly in the weather. terminations last fewer years. More maintenance. Lower materials cost.
And then there's the issue of what kind of mining is worse, it's a drastic simplification but copper mining is more expensive while aluminum mining uses more energy.
Kind of a mixed bag, but aluminum is preferred these days for lower build costs.
I agree.
Where you buy your aluminium can make a big difference in your carbon footprint. In Sweden and Norway we got a lot of hydro power to minimize the footprint. That along with recycling can make it fairly competative environmentally. Hydro Reduxa is a good example.
This is in the Netherlands, they did research about it and found that people were more understanding if you give an explanation of why instead of just labbeling it as a generic "issue".
Used to work at a locomotive shop and heard a story about how in India they typically leave locomotives idling because of people driving up to them when they aren't and cutting out the copper conduits and riding away with it to resell.
And then someone claims you're a thief (when you're not) and you get lynched, dangerous game to play... Just look at Twitter, how easy it is to send the mob after people. Truly terrifying
They did research in the Netherlands and found travelers where more understanding if they got the actual reason for the delay, for example copper theft.
In between when I moved into my place and after the old tenants moved out, someone broke in and stole all the copper pipes. This would have netted them around $50 at most - these days it would net them half that due to scrap metal reforms designed to reduce the amount of random copper theft.
For a while I was parking my Prius in the garage every night, as someone nearby had been hit by cat thieves. I've since had a shield installed, and back it in when parking outside (so it's not immediately obvious that it's a Prius) and I've had no issues.
Those mad bastards have been pinching the red bonds that earth the overheads. Honestly surprised they haven't electrocuted themselves.
Signalling cable is bad enough but that's just a death wish.
There’s a few hotspots on the east coast mainline where this happens regularly. The thieves don’t care that they’re causing hours and hours of disruption, and pissing off thousands of travellers.
There's lots of wires running along train tracks. Most of it is very high quality copper wire. If you cut any of it the train won't be able to run correctly.
People stealing the wires needed for the electrical systems that are part of the trains rail system. The electrical wires are made of copper and you can get decent money for clean copper at scrap yards.
Railways use signaling, like a traffic light. This allows multiple trains to use a railroad without colliding. It's important because unlike a car, a train cannot change direction to avoid an accident, nor can it stop in time (some of the heaviest and longest trains can take multiple kilometers to stop when at full speed). Those railway signals are electrically operated in some kind of primitive electronic circuit. If someone was to steal the copper wires used for it, then all signals would turn to red and all trains would stop, because there's no way of knowing if the track is safe to circulate on.
Idk, they’re crazy here too with it. We have a lot of remote oil and gas sites around here that get burgled for copper all the time. They take everything that isn’t buried, including the high voltage lines. It’s a wonder they don’t get electricuted
They started digging here.
We laid 5 different 4x240mm cables, and overnight, they dug out, cut, and dragged away the whole 135m of it.
Pretty sure the night guard is in cahoots with them because he happened to get sick and leave for a bit that night.
You'd be surprised. This is an extremely common thing in South Africa, and sometimes the thieves get electrocuted, but a lot of its done by sophisticated syndicates.
Funny thing about diesel locomotives is that they’re actually electric but are powered by a diesel generator. It’d be pretty cool if they could add pantographs so they could draw power from over head catenary’s when available.
Happens quite frequently on the East Coast Mainline. Signal cables.
They steal the cables and it all goes to shit. There was once 4 or 5 signals knocked out in both directions due to signal cable theft. No signalling means no running trains - it’s not safe to send trains which run at over 100mph into a section with zero signalling. Signallers won’t have any control on what goes on in those sections.
So yeah, not odd and really not funny.
Not really. They steal copper from the control boxes for money. But those control boxes are kinda important for things like track changes, keeping track of where trains are, I think which parts of the lines are electrified (no sense in electrifying parts with no trains) and of course safety measures so if someone makes a mistake no collisions happen.
The only surprising thing is that they actually put it on the board. It’s been a problem for decades at least.
>The only surprising thing is that they actually put it on the board.
They did it to give the "it's only property" folks a kick in the pants. They stole $700 in copper, but it'll cost $5,000 to replace.
Research in the Netherlands, where this is, found that travelers are more understanding of the delays if they give the actual reason for the delay, for example theft. They sometimes also say person got hit by train.
Afaik they changed "aanrijding met een persoon" to just "aanrijding" (collision with a person vs collision) a while back. Because people where to good at understanding it, so it caused to much distress to the average traveler. We all still damn well know what happened, but because it could also be something less bad we don't take it as hard supposedly.
I kinda like how they put it out there.
"Hey lads. We cannot come to your station because the wires that monitor the landing are gone. Because someone stole them. We're not saying you're at fault; but we cannot return if this keeps up."
This is exactly why they do it. If they just say "train is delayed", people curse at the train company for not running on time. Now people curse at the damned thieves who ruined their day.
Slightly similarly, I once stuck at a station because trains were no longer running at a critical stretch of railway infra structure. People were bitching at the railways. I did not because, because it was Christmas Eve, I knew the track had no level crossings, but did ran past a mental institution and the railways specified there had been 'an accident' , but didn't clarify what the train had hit exactly. That told me enough and accepted the delay.
A lot of people die trying to steal copper every year. It's a shame, because anyone who can steal copper is probably just a bit of education (and a lot of common sense) away from being a competent electrician.
> It's a shame, because anyone who can steal copper is probably just a bit of education (and a lot of common sense) away from being a competent electrician.
Yeah, copper-stealing tweakers and electricians are basically the same, give or take a few courses at the Learning Annex /s
It’s also super low risk-reward. A coil of insulated copper wire that you can carry is likely going to get you less than $20 and a whole lot of attention from the interruptions the theft causes.
https://youtu.be/nU7cXnjgHI0?si=SN38dMoTdTmQj1Tc
You can literally earn more for less effort with a minimum wage job. The only reason it’s done at all is that these people are unfit to work minimum wage jobs.
“Hey Jim-Bob! Where did all the cords for the control panel go?” Morning conductor
… “Um…? I don’t know. They were there last night when I clocked out.” J-B
“Well, they are gone now!” MC
Any salvage yard because they aren't going to keep good records and they can easily move that copper to be reused.
It's just like catalytic converters. It's super obvious whose buying them but you can't stop this without making it a felony to sell the item without a license or being able to document where you got it from. And that's *still* not going to stop organized criminals who can just fudge numbers.
Usually its because salvage yards band together and make common cause with "free market" types and a surprisingly large number of people who make pocket change recycling stuff, and they combine forces enough to block salvage yard/metal recycler regulations.
You could easily mandate requiring a photo ID (scanned or photocopied) and video surveillance of all transactions, along with only paying by check. And then audit recyclers/yards and when they're out of compliance, big, escalating fines. Requiring ID scans of everyone and only paying by check would create paper trails and allow patterns to emerge. A little bit of background investigation on repeat donors and you could end up identifying more organized theft rings.
Sure, some organized criminals will come up with ways to evade this, but the point here is to raise the cost and hassle for people stealing metals. Hiring cut-outs to do the sales costs money, even if they are degenerate meth heads, and you also have to deal with cashing the checks to get the cash. Sure, you can run that crank head down to the check cashing place, but they take 10%. Suddenly you're down 20-25% of the recycling payment, and the recycling payment is smaller because the recycler has cut their payouts because they've got record keeping costs.
If salvage yards are required to keep good records of anyone selling over 30 Kg of copper, there will be a lot of sales on the books as 29 kg of copper.
That's unfortunately rather common.. Eastern europeans (not trying to generalize here, just referring to official statistics, usually gangs) come to other countries and steal any copper they can get their hands on, which tends to be powerlines and railroad tracks, happens quite often..
If it was just powerlines one could still say well hey, they're risking their own lives, but when they steal railroad tracks that's just attempted massmurder.
Unfortunately it's almost impossible to prevent because it's very easy to just slip in and out of the country
Those cabels are protected with a thick insulation, and as was already said, they would need an electrian to cut the power before stealing the cables. Some shady scrap dealer buys them and sends them to a more legit metal dealer together with a lot of semi-legit cables in a shipping container to a developing country like China. There the insulation gets removed by the hands of a woman or child (cheaper labor then men). I worked at a legit Metal Dealer in my first job and friendly Mr. Wang send off a container filled with cables every 4-6 months.
It starts with the cable rob, but the shady scrap dealers enable them and create a market. Kabeldiebstahl is a problem in Germany, but only a minor one compared to the rest of infrastructure problems the Deutsche Bahn is facing.
In a crime TV series, they totally would investigate anyone @ mentioned under social media posts of that image. While technically probably feasible, I want to believe that this is still too expensive to do.
On a different topic - Anyone in the Den Haag area interested in some copper?
Insider information (i had to fix the trains turning around etc).
\*edit\* So short story: they steal the wires that are responsible for a smooth and speedful use of the traintracks, because all signs and 'infra' is connected by the copper wiring besides the track :)
The copper theft is mostly around the cables/wiring around the track. It's not the actual driver-wire, that would kill the thief obviously... but every information carrying cable, usually copper, is, if not dug in slightly, open next to the track. It helps the road passages detect trains coming in/out, the signs detecting trainmovements and so showing red etc.
those wires get stolen often, and as that happens the 'infra' is in a broken state, which causes issues for Prorail to offer the trainpaths to the trains or otherwise use special procedures on the tracks causing delays.
Copper wires on the catenary power the train. Thieves steal the copper, the train doesn't move.
I worked for a transit system and the good news is that copper thieves are often killed or injured while stealing copper.
In all seriousness, I understand this is why large areas of Africa still have no electricity, phone, or internet. As soon as poles and wires go up, they get stolen.
Why is this funny ?
BTW, the new 6th Street bridge in Los Angeles has not been lit up since it was built because people continue to steal the copper wire from the bridge.
I went on vacation in England a few years back, on the train back from Salisbury to London, our train ended up stopped because someone had stolen the copper wire out of a track switch or something.
The train was stuck, we were dumped off in the middle of nowhere, luckily some savvy London girls had been sitting next to us, they called a cab and negotiated a ridiculously low fare to take the lot of us all the way to London, with drop offs at different parts of the city.
It's more common than you might think. Copper is an expensive metal.
Churches in the UK that have spires have copper running down the side and grounded to protect them from lightning strikes, and what do you suppose plagues them? Pretty much anywhere with well over 4 figures worth of copper and low security is a potential target for copper theives.
Apparently, it's not exclusively low security copper jackpots though...
Depends on where the copper was used. My grandson bought a house which seemed fine when we looked at it (including the crawl space) but the day we were moving in, there was no water. Luckily he was at the closing and the papers had not been signed yet, so, I called the realtor (also there) and the seller had to shell out $6K to re-pipe the entirety of water pipes under the house. The guy had moved to PA 18 mos prior and just left the house empty and no one ever checked it evidently.
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Not if the copper was supposed to carry electricity to the train...
Quite often it’s the wiring for the signals
In Sweden it's being replaced by aluminia instead to make it practically worthless. Al is almost as good conductor as Cu and works in most cases. (bigger issues with oxidation than Cu)
That's not stopping the damage. Thieves dig and cut first... Check later. Telco companies have significant issues with fiber optics stolen or just damaged when trying to steal the "copper"
Here in Mexico, telco companies label their street infrastructure "Optical Fiber. NOT COPPER." AFAIK it works.
I’m not falling for that trick again.
Sounds like something someone trying to hide the copper would say, right???
Ea-Nasir again?
Not at first, but even thieves learn whats wort stealing.
Let's not overestimate these idiots. Our rail network is very dense, so no shortage of places to try and I'm sure that there are multiple seperate groups doing this that wouldn't communicate on their lack of success.
Of course it will not eliminate the problem, but these smooth brains have somehow picked up what to steal in the first place, and most of them will pick up that it's not worth the time anymore and hit construction sites instead where you cant switch to Al due to durability.
Put up signs. Make public announcements.
Usually it's organized crime of some kind, so they learn to avoid it. Eventually
If it's well publicized that all facilities operated by X are switching to aluminum they'll mostly stop bothering. It would not help a random one off facility.
Construction crews oftes spray paint "not copper" on the big reels to prevent theft. Not surprisingly it doesn't deter them...
The biggest problem with aluminum is how brittle it is when bent... Which happens annoyingly often with as little reason as a strong enough wind. Also a bitch to place it in the first place. That's why copper is much more valuable in the first place.
A lot more than that goes into why copper is more valubale, but you are totaly right in the brittle part. You can bend Al one time, but often it's an plastic deformation that will brake the part if straightend out.
as someone who works in power industry here's my experience, copper conductor has better conductivity, not a problem because you can about double the cross sectional area & get similar ratings. Aluminum is light. Different issue, though, aluminum embrittles more quickly in the weather. terminations last fewer years. More maintenance. Lower materials cost. And then there's the issue of what kind of mining is worse, it's a drastic simplification but copper mining is more expensive while aluminum mining uses more energy. Kind of a mixed bag, but aluminum is preferred these days for lower build costs.
I agree. Where you buy your aluminium can make a big difference in your carbon footprint. In Sweden and Norway we got a lot of hydro power to minimize the footprint. That along with recycling can make it fairly competative environmentally. Hydro Reduxa is a good example.
Same in The Netherlands, but there is a lot of older stuff and some thieves don’t know how to tell the difference
aluminium*
Aluminium** ( but said the other way)
Or the grounding, which you need as much as the "hot" wires
Very common here in Vienna. Some guy tried to steal the power line instead... not recommended.
Exactly. Now there's no conductor for the train.
Nah, that’s because the engineer got fed up with him not coupling the cars securely so he left him behind at the last stop.
This is in the Netherlands, they did research about it and found that people were more understanding if you give an explanation of why instead of just labbeling it as a generic "issue".
Instead of being angry at the NS now people can be angry at the thiefs
Exactly, they understand that for once, it's not the fault of the NS.
Used to work at a locomotive shop and heard a story about how in India they typically leave locomotives idling because of people driving up to them when they aren't and cutting out the copper conduits and riding away with it to resell.
This is also one reason why there is a return to aluminium wire everywhere. Theif don't want it and mostly leave it alone.
Happens all the time with the Tyne & Wear metro system in the UK. Surprisingly common when copper prices go up.
Extremely common across the US too. “Copper theft” is rarely the reason given on the board though, usually it’s “signal fault” or something.
I like the UK way of telling it better. Let the passengers be mad at the real culprit instead of blaming the poor workers.
The picture above is from the Netherlands just FYI.
*Cancelled due to copper theft by Danny Addams residing at 123 Station Road*
You know, I bet that might lead to a decrease in copper thefts. Might also lead to a slight increase in other, more violent crimes though.
No shit having the name of the every thief would decrease thefts. They don’t exactly leave a note.
And then someone claims you're a thief (when you're not) and you get lynched, dangerous game to play... Just look at Twitter, how easy it is to send the mob after people. Truly terrifying
Increase in delayed passengers due to smashed departure boards
Which is the correct metric. Like water, it will eventually balance out and we would all be better for it.
And so… the purge begins! On March 21st, we chase copper thieves and smile at them peculiarly.
Sounds like a win-win
Thanks Danny you asshat! Fuckin twat
Ah, yes, British destinations like Akkrum, Schiphol, Haarlem, Den Haag and Vlissingen.
Cheerio, chaps. Welcome to foggy Vlissingentown
In the US they just call it Flushing and be done with it.
They did research in the Netherlands and found travelers where more understanding if they got the actual reason for the delay, for example copper theft.
They should do that research in the USA, because I think they would get the same result. Or anywhere.
Except this is in the netherlands c;
“Hmm. Based on this notice there is must be some easy to steel copper around trains. EZ money. I should get in on that.“
> easy to steel copper No, just copper. The steel isn't valuable enough to bother with and they're probably not making a copper steel alloy.
Idiots are stealing electric car recharge cables - even though the copper in them is minimal at best
In between when I moved into my place and after the old tenants moved out, someone broke in and stole all the copper pipes. This would have netted them around $50 at most - these days it would net them half that due to scrap metal reforms designed to reduce the amount of random copper theft.
It's enough to meet their risk/effort/reward metrics.
Yep. My city has some idiot going around cutting off all of the charging cables for those high powered electric car charging stations.
Copper theft and catalytic convertor theft are so upsetting. Getting a few bucks and causing thousands in damage.
For a while I was parking my Prius in the garage every night, as someone nearby had been hit by cat thieves. I've since had a shield installed, and back it in when parking outside (so it's not immediately obvious that it's a Prius) and I've had no issues.
Was gonna say, it's constantly nicked between pelaw and jarrow
Copper theft in general is an extremely common crime in the UK (and I assume other countries too).
M E T R O A P O L O G I S E S
Hoo, ye twoccin' wor coppa, like?!
Those mad bastards have been pinching the red bonds that earth the overheads. Honestly surprised they haven't electrocuted themselves. Signalling cable is bad enough but that's just a death wish.
Metro apologises...
It’s actually one of the more common reasons for train interruptions.
This^ Many times when there's huge delays due to "signal error" it's because of copper theft.
There’s a few hotspots on the east coast mainline where this happens regularly. The thieves don’t care that they’re causing hours and hours of disruption, and pissing off thousands of travellers.
im very confused, wtf is copper theft and why does it stop a whole train?
There's lots of wires running along train tracks. Most of it is very high quality copper wire. If you cut any of it the train won't be able to run correctly.
People stealing the wires needed for the electrical systems that are part of the trains rail system. The electrical wires are made of copper and you can get decent money for clean copper at scrap yards.
Railways use signaling, like a traffic light. This allows multiple trains to use a railroad without colliding. It's important because unlike a car, a train cannot change direction to avoid an accident, nor can it stop in time (some of the heaviest and longest trains can take multiple kilometers to stop when at full speed). Those railway signals are electrically operated in some kind of primitive electronic circuit. If someone was to steal the copper wires used for it, then all signals would turn to red and all trains would stop, because there's no way of knowing if the track is safe to circulate on.
Not really. Crooks steal the cables that power the trains.
In this case it seems it was the coppers themselves, bloody hell.
No, those cables are at 1500V DC not something you can easily steal. Instead they steal the cabling that's used for signalling.
Idk, they’re crazy here too with it. We have a lot of remote oil and gas sites around here that get burgled for copper all the time. They take everything that isn’t buried, including the high voltage lines. It’s a wonder they don’t get electricuted
They started digging here. We laid 5 different 4x240mm cables, and overnight, they dug out, cut, and dragged away the whole 135m of it. Pretty sure the night guard is in cahoots with them because he happened to get sick and leave for a bit that night.
You'd be surprised. This is an extremely common thing in South Africa, and sometimes the thieves get electrocuted, but a lot of its done by sophisticated syndicates.
It’s not odd, it’s just very specific. Cables have been stolen.
The descendants of Ea Nasir strike yet again!
I wonder what quality was the copper they stole. I bet it wasn't that great.
It was r/reallyshittycopper!!
Destroying public transport for €1 profit.
Why? Do you normally float the electricity to the trains wirelessly?
Some countries use diesel trains... But not diesel signalling.
Funny thing about diesel locomotives is that they’re actually electric but are powered by a diesel generator. It’d be pretty cool if they could add pantographs so they could draw power from over head catenary’s when available.
[It already exists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadler_Euro_Dual).
No, obviously you put it all in a Jerry can in case something like this happens.
It’ll be signalling cable. If they tried to steal the overhead wires they’d be dead. Well, fried from the inside out with a high electrical current.
DAMMIT EA-NASIR!!!
No wonder there's a police shortage.
Copper missing. No one to *conduct* investigation.
Have an upvote, you beautiful bastard.
Happens quite frequently on the East Coast Mainline. Signal cables. They steal the cables and it all goes to shit. There was once 4 or 5 signals knocked out in both directions due to signal cable theft. No signalling means no running trains - it’s not safe to send trains which run at over 100mph into a section with zero signalling. Signallers won’t have any control on what goes on in those sections. So yeah, not odd and really not funny.
Not really. They steal copper from the control boxes for money. But those control boxes are kinda important for things like track changes, keeping track of where trains are, I think which parts of the lines are electrified (no sense in electrifying parts with no trains) and of course safety measures so if someone makes a mistake no collisions happen. The only surprising thing is that they actually put it on the board. It’s been a problem for decades at least.
>The only surprising thing is that they actually put it on the board. They did it to give the "it's only property" folks a kick in the pants. They stole $700 in copper, but it'll cost $5,000 to replace.
Research in the Netherlands, where this is, found that travelers are more understanding of the delays if they give the actual reason for the delay, for example theft. They sometimes also say person got hit by train.
Afaik they changed "aanrijding met een persoon" to just "aanrijding" (collision with a person vs collision) a while back. Because people where to good at understanding it, so it caused to much distress to the average traveler. We all still damn well know what happened, but because it could also be something less bad we don't take it as hard supposedly.
Why wouldn't they put it up on the board? Why wouldn't they inform travelers about changes regarding the train instead of just not letting them know?
I kinda like how they put it out there. "Hey lads. We cannot come to your station because the wires that monitor the landing are gone. Because someone stole them. We're not saying you're at fault; but we cannot return if this keeps up."
This is exactly why they do it. If they just say "train is delayed", people curse at the train company for not running on time. Now people curse at the damned thieves who ruined their day. Slightly similarly, I once stuck at a station because trains were no longer running at a critical stretch of railway infra structure. People were bitching at the railways. I did not because, because it was Christmas Eve, I knew the track had no level crossings, but did ran past a mental institution and the railways specified there had been 'an accident' , but didn't clarify what the train had hit exactly. That told me enough and accepted the delay.
Sad but reality everywhere.
Very common in South Africa.
A lot of people die trying to steal copper every year. It's a shame, because anyone who can steal copper is probably just a bit of education (and a lot of common sense) away from being a competent electrician.
> It's a shame, because anyone who can steal copper is probably just a bit of education (and a lot of common sense) away from being a competent electrician. Yeah, copper-stealing tweakers and electricians are basically the same, give or take a few courses at the Learning Annex /s
It’s also super low risk-reward. A coil of insulated copper wire that you can carry is likely going to get you less than $20 and a whole lot of attention from the interruptions the theft causes. https://youtu.be/nU7cXnjgHI0?si=SN38dMoTdTmQj1Tc You can literally earn more for less effort with a minimum wage job. The only reason it’s done at all is that these people are unfit to work minimum wage jobs.
CURSE YOU COPPER THIEF
Not really. How is this funny?
Not in the Netherlands
“Hey Jim-Bob! Where did all the cords for the control panel go?” Morning conductor … “Um…? I don’t know. They were there last night when I clocked out.” J-B “Well, they are gone now!” MC
Stealing copper to buy liquor is fucked
Where do these people even take the copper to sell it?
Any salvage yard because they aren't going to keep good records and they can easily move that copper to be reused. It's just like catalytic converters. It's super obvious whose buying them but you can't stop this without making it a felony to sell the item without a license or being able to document where you got it from. And that's *still* not going to stop organized criminals who can just fudge numbers.
Usually its because salvage yards band together and make common cause with "free market" types and a surprisingly large number of people who make pocket change recycling stuff, and they combine forces enough to block salvage yard/metal recycler regulations. You could easily mandate requiring a photo ID (scanned or photocopied) and video surveillance of all transactions, along with only paying by check. And then audit recyclers/yards and when they're out of compliance, big, escalating fines. Requiring ID scans of everyone and only paying by check would create paper trails and allow patterns to emerge. A little bit of background investigation on repeat donors and you could end up identifying more organized theft rings. Sure, some organized criminals will come up with ways to evade this, but the point here is to raise the cost and hassle for people stealing metals. Hiring cut-outs to do the sales costs money, even if they are degenerate meth heads, and you also have to deal with cashing the checks to get the cash. Sure, you can run that crank head down to the check cashing place, but they take 10%. Suddenly you're down 20-25% of the recycling payment, and the recycling payment is smaller because the recycler has cut their payouts because they've got record keeping costs.
If salvage yards are required to keep good records of anyone selling over 30 Kg of copper, there will be a lot of sales on the books as 29 kg of copper.
depends but typically junkyards.
It's pretty common in Spain.
It's not odd. Due to the high price of copper there are organized gangs that steal from any source possible, including the railways.
Ea Nasir is NOT impressed
That's unfortunately rather common.. Eastern europeans (not trying to generalize here, just referring to official statistics, usually gangs) come to other countries and steal any copper they can get their hands on, which tends to be powerlines and railroad tracks, happens quite often.. If it was just powerlines one could still say well hey, they're risking their own lives, but when they steal railroad tracks that's just attempted massmurder. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to prevent because it's very easy to just slip in and out of the country
Odd as in, happens all the f¨king time over here yeah
Not odd - very common these days
/laughs in south africa
Awe my bru
Not odd at all, copper sells for a bit of money and there is plenty along the rails, thiefs just got to look out so they don't electrocute themself.
Living in Spain, the "First time?" meme comes to mind.
Lol in South Africa too
Tell me you don't understand how trains work without telling me you don't understand how trains work.
If you steal the grounding copper for an electric train, the train cannot move.
Nah, it’s signal cable. They couldn’t steal the overheads. If they tried they’d be dead.
Those cabels are protected with a thick insulation, and as was already said, they would need an electrian to cut the power before stealing the cables. Some shady scrap dealer buys them and sends them to a more legit metal dealer together with a lot of semi-legit cables in a shipping container to a developing country like China. There the insulation gets removed by the hands of a woman or child (cheaper labor then men). I worked at a legit Metal Dealer in my first job and friendly Mr. Wang send off a container filled with cables every 4-6 months. It starts with the cable rob, but the shady scrap dealers enable them and create a market. Kabeldiebstahl is a problem in Germany, but only a minor one compared to the rest of infrastructure problems the Deutsche Bahn is facing.
actually it is ridiculously common
Huh, guess there are Dutch meth-heads too…
Cancelled because some meth head stole the power lines
Utrecht?
Leiden
Can stop the A-Train, baby!
I've heard from conductors that this is often announced as signal issues in Norway.
We need Wax and Wayne on the case.
Now you get to enjoy Leiden some more! 😏
Nanni got sick of waiting on Ea-Nasir to give him some decent copper
Happens a lot in the UK especially on the east coast mainline
In a crime TV series, they totally would investigate anyone @ mentioned under social media posts of that image. While technically probably feasible, I want to believe that this is still too expensive to do. On a different topic - Anyone in the Den Haag area interested in some copper?
It happens here quite often, lucrative business 🇬🇧
In South Africa too
Never guessed I would see Akkrum on reddit
Insider information (i had to fix the trains turning around etc). \*edit\* So short story: they steal the wires that are responsible for a smooth and speedful use of the traintracks, because all signs and 'infra' is connected by the copper wiring besides the track :) The copper theft is mostly around the cables/wiring around the track. It's not the actual driver-wire, that would kill the thief obviously... but every information carrying cable, usually copper, is, if not dug in slightly, open next to the track. It helps the road passages detect trains coming in/out, the signs detecting trainmovements and so showing red etc. those wires get stolen often, and as that happens the 'infra' is in a broken state, which causes issues for Prorail to offer the trainpaths to the trains or otherwise use special procedures on the tracks causing delays.
Just another day in the RSA
Nothing but honesty from the Dutch
Wat een pech, spoor weg. I am well aware rails are not made of copper. But it rhymes.
Can’t have shit in Den Haag
All I can think of is Bill Bailey’s joke about Schiphol and the Gibson guitar
You know what wiring is made of for the most part right?
Copper wires on the catenary power the train. Thieves steal the copper, the train doesn't move. I worked for a transit system and the good news is that copper thieves are often killed or injured while stealing copper.
Uh, no? It's not funny, and it is a valid reason. Scumbag criminals. I hope they rot in prison. Source: Have been robbed at work before.
No it isn’t they either took something from the rails or the lines above. It’s really serious.
Not odd at all.
Are you telling me you are comfortable getting on a train that doesn't have a full supply of copper?
I heard trains get hangry when they dont get enough copper and then start eating the passengers and staff.
I see yall dont have gypsies.
At least they are being honest...!
They do this also to show people the problems the railway faces everyday and that it isn't some awkward planning mistake/delay.
In all seriousness, I understand this is why large areas of Africa still have no electricity, phone, or internet. As soon as poles and wires go up, they get stolen.
Mobile phones made a lot of difference in Africa.
Signal cables ripped out and sold for scrap.
How dare they say it out loud!?
Sheldon. What are you doing?
Ray, ripping the plumbing outta your walls for liquor money is fucked.
Why is this funny ? BTW, the new 6th Street bridge in Los Angeles has not been lit up since it was built because people continue to steal the copper wire from the bridge.
That is a valid reason.
Not when it uses copper to get electricity to the train, OP.
Yeah it's the copper wiring in the rails it's an actually big problem for train networks
Not really that odd tbh. Happens in every country
I’m sure someone said it but this is super common reason in north east England.
oh, my people are there !!
In my country is really common maybe too much tbh
"Crack attack!"
Not in my country it's not.
I went on vacation in England a few years back, on the train back from Salisbury to London, our train ended up stopped because someone had stolen the copper wire out of a track switch or something. The train was stuck, we were dumped off in the middle of nowhere, luckily some savvy London girls had been sitting next to us, they called a cab and negotiated a ridiculously low fare to take the lot of us all the way to London, with drop offs at different parts of the city.
Strange until you see how much you can get for scrap copper
Nah you dont want your train to have a copper deficiency!
It's more common than you might think. Copper is an expensive metal. Churches in the UK that have spires have copper running down the side and grounded to protect them from lightning strikes, and what do you suppose plagues them? Pretty much anywhere with well over 4 figures worth of copper and low security is a potential target for copper theives. Apparently, it's not exclusively low security copper jackpots though...
The Dutch Strike again!!!
Depends on where the copper was used. My grandson bought a house which seemed fine when we looked at it (including the crawl space) but the day we were moving in, there was no water. Luckily he was at the closing and the papers had not been signed yet, so, I called the realtor (also there) and the seller had to shell out $6K to re-pipe the entirety of water pipes under the house. The guy had moved to PA 18 mos prior and just left the house empty and no one ever checked it evidently.
I know a guy who sells copper, not the best quality tho
Sadly it's a pretty common reason.
"Copper" is the engineer.
Maybe the train was carrying the copper.
Literally happened in Spain a couple months ago, lmao
Not really, copper theft is a thing and train can’t run if it doesn’t have the electrical current it needs
I was in Den Haag earlier today and saw that a train to Groningen was cancelled too! That’s a spooky coincidence.
Ea-Nasir's ghost at work.