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:
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'.
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.
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:
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!
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
I'm sorry to hear that, Oliver. We spent a lot of time trying to strike the right balance of tone and storytelling on both the print feature and web video.
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.
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
Not sure I associate the old HO/OO and O toy trains at all with the live steam scales. One is a mass produced toy, the other is model engineering that might take hundreds or thousands of hours to make ("who’d built his locomotive over 25 years"). The difference between an art print and an original and as strange to see as discussion of prints in a story an art theft.
FWIW the aesthetics of the railway modellers shop site is exactly as I expect from the model engineering, collectors, watch making and similar hobby supply sites. Few are going to make a fortune or scale much beyond enthusiast in a shed. So forget Bootstrap and Shopify, expect lots of non-optimised huge images. :)
Not at all surprise to find the police weren't any use. They're far too starved of budget lately to give theft anything much more than a crime number for the insurance claim.
Source: Occasional model engineer, though not trains.
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.
Agreed. I had a break-in in my apartment last decade and the cop who came in just said "it happens all the time in terrace level apartments". A week later the investigating detective sent a form for me to fill and that was that. They giving me a police report to be used to file claims with insurance was the only useful thing they did.
In a town hall meeting later that year the local police chief said they don't investigate burglaries unless it was a home invasion (they coming in while you are present).
Despite our multiple inquiries with the Kent/Hertfordshire police in the UK, it's still unclear whether they fully investigated arguably the most significant lead in the theft: a suspicious man named "Jamie" who attempted to sell similar-looking model locomotives to a train shop ~62 miles away, just hours after the robbery was discovered...Jamie took off in a rush after the shop's owner asked for paperwork on the trains. The Kent police say they passed the lead onto Hertfordshire; the Hertfordshire police told me they have no record of the incident.
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.
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.
19 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 50.9 ms ] threadhttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/20/rod-stewart-...
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'.
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
FWIW the aesthetics of the railway modellers shop site is exactly as I expect from the model engineering, collectors, watch making and similar hobby supply sites. Few are going to make a fortune or scale much beyond enthusiast in a shed. So forget Bootstrap and Shopify, expect lots of non-optimised huge images. :)
Not at all surprise to find the police weren't any use. They're far too starved of budget lately to give theft anything much more than a crime number for the insurance claim.
Source: Occasional model engineer, though not trains.
In a town hall meeting later that year the local police chief said they don't investigate burglaries unless it was a home invasion (they coming in while you are present).
Huge claim to make on a sample size of 2.
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.
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...
Anyway, something to do with boiler testing -
http://www.wirralmodelengineeringsociety.co.uk/BoilerTesting...