Theft of Signalling Cable

[Signal_Box]

Ideally, yes.

But often with this type of crime a relatively small number of prolific repeat offenders are responsible, so catching them in the act can prevent further incidents. And high intensity zero tolerance policing has worked well to deter and reduce other crimes such as street robbery in known hotspots.

Robust policing often offends communities who are often the victims of such crimes, with resultant claims of targeting based on profiling.

Brixton, Broadwater Farm rings a bell….

 

[zwk500]

Ideally, yes.

But often with this type of crime a relatively small number of prolific repeat offenders are responsible, so catching them in the act can prevent further incidents. And high intensity zero tolerance policing has worked well to deter and reduce other crimes such as street robbery in known hotspots.

Specific locations that suffer repeated incidents can of course be hardened up, but there isn't the resources to cover the entire line, and often if you harden up one location the thieves will just move to the next location that hasn't been hardened up. So it just becomes an enormous, disruptive, expensive and ultimately ineffective game of cat-and-mouse.

 

[InTheEastMids]

Identifying the presence of a person is only of any use if you can respond to site before they have caused the damage. There arent enough people to cover the lineside that fast. Otherwise all you have is a description of who you should be looking for after they've already stopped the railway.

That was exactly the point I was making - that some (including my clients who should know better) get very excited about what technology like this can/ might be able to do, but haven't really thought through the implications for their ways of working. One client in particular went on proving the tech in ever tougher situations, in my opinion as a displacement activity to avoid the more complex challenge of getting something to operational deployment

Imagine that, with some tech, you had total visibility of every act of railway trespass... I'm sure some people would just trigger the sensors for a laugh. So in some areas, it might not be about stopping the railway, but finding moments when it could start.

And high intensity zero tolerance policing has worked well to deter and reduce other crimes such as street robbery in known hotspots

Yes agree, and then think about how tech and data can support. Not necessarily value theft, but I bet Google know/could find out where and when the trespass hotspots are.

 

[johntea]

At my old job one weekend some thieves did a runner with an external air conditioning unit, they didn't care about cutting through live cables or anything

It was cooling the main computer server room so potentially could have caused say £50,000 worth of damage/loss to the organization just so they could pocket £500 or whatever from the scraps!

Opening the door to the room on Monday morning (they didn't really have adequate enough monitoring back then) was like the sensation you get when stepping off a plane at a hot destination but about 100 times worse

 

[The North Briton]

I notice that LNER have changed the wording on their website to ‘theft of cabling equipment’, is this any different from ‘theft of signalling cable’ or just ‘theft of cable’ I wonder?

 

[popeter45]

how does the backend of long distance signal cabeling work these days?, if IP based then should be easy to design so that the data can take multible routes so breakage of a cable wouldnt take out the signalling abiet you prob want to replace the cable ASAP

 

[noddingdonkey]

I suspect you would still have a "last mile" problem

 

[Falcon1200]

Seen similar on a 25kV traction return bus bar at a feeder station. Grim.

I recall an incident (maybe the same one ?) where a couple of guys thought bus bars were safe to steal as they were not live unless a train was passing; Unfortunately (for them) trains were running late that morning......

 

[E27007]

If the Railway resignalled for a GSMR system with In-Cab Signalling, would such a system be affected by cable theft?

In a recent upgrade project, at a critical point in the scheme timetable, every drum of cable was stored in a secure facility and each drum allocated a squad of no less than 5 security guards for storage and transit to the worksite in case of a hijack attempt, it was not just the value of a drum (£50,000), but also the knock on effect of project disruption if the drums were stolen.

 

[zwk500]

If the Railway resignalled for a GSMR system with In-Cab Signalling, would such a system be affected by cable theft?

Yes, but to a much lower degree. There are still axle counters and track circuits needed at ETCS L2, but only in specific areas like busy junctions, there are beacons that might need power as well as the electrification systems, but you wouldn't have any powered signals out in the open so no 660V power cables.
So many fewer power cables to pinch, although you will still have people going after data cables not realising they've not got any copper.

 

[MadMac]

The Los Angeles Metro is, at least on the “surface” lines, buried ductbanks with manholes, the lids having security bolts. There was an attempt to steal what turned out to be fibre about four years ago (bizarrely, during the evening rush hour!), but that is the only instance I can recall.

On a side note, there used to be quite a bit of money in the wooden drums. I recall a memo from HQ Materials about a Leeds-based company that was turning up at depots and quoting known names in positions of authority claiming that they had been sent to collect empty drums. They showed up at Motherwell two days after we got the memo - it just so happened that BTP were already there on other business…..

 

[zwk500]

On a side note, there used to be quite a bit of money in the wooden drums. I recall a memo from HQ Materials about a Leeds-based company that was turning up at depots and quoting known names in positions of authority claiming that they had been sent to collect empty drums. They showed up at Motherwell two days after we got the memo - it just so happened that BTP were already there on other business

That ones a well used tactic. I've heard of a number of music schools losing valuable pianos by people claiming to be repair/renovation companies and being waved through only to never be seen again.

 

[alxndr]

Yes, but to a much lower degree. There are still axle counters and track circuits needed at ETCS L2, but only in specific areas like busy junctions, there are beacons that might need power as well as the electrification systems, but you wouldn't have any powered signals out in the open so no 660V power cables.
So many fewer power cables to pinch, although you will still have people going after data cables not realising they've not got any copper.

You'd still need points, and they're typically powered by transforming 650V down to the required voltages.

how does the backend of long distance signal cabeling work these days?, if IP based then should be easy to design so that the data can take multible routes so breakage of a cable wouldnt take out the signalling abiet you prob want to replace the cable ASAP

There are two legs, and they should be diversely routed so that a break/fire/whatever is unlikely to knock out both paths at once.

 

[Bald Rick]

A graph plotting copper price with cable theft incidents shows a remarkable correlation.

 

[mmh]

Someone stole the drain covers from the streets near us. I think we're going to go back to this being a problem again for a while, even with the tighter rules on scrap metal dealing.

That's far more likely to be drunken people lifting them up and then dumping them somewhere else when they've had enough of carrying it.

 

[Grumpy Git]

That's far more likely to be drunken people lifting them up and then dumping them somewhere else when they've had enough of carrying it.

I disagree. It will 99.9% likely be theft for scrap.

I had some old radiators cluttering-up my garage, nothing fancy, got about £25 scrap when I was expecting no more than a fiver.

 

[skyhigh]

That's far more likely to be drunken people lifting them up and then dumping them somewhere else when they've had enough of carrying it.

No chance. It happened on my street a few years back. You don't get drunks carrying every single drain cover on the street somewhere else and dumping them out of sight!

 

[mmh]

No chance. It happened on my street a few years back. You don't get drunks carrying every single drain cover on the street somewhere else and dumping them out of sight!

I wouldn't be quite so sure. I did it once, with many other people, drunken in my youth.

 

[philthetube]

Hammer the dealers, and dealer caught dealing in stolen copper should be responsible for the cost of repair and any other costs caused by the theft.

Use smart water and require dealers to check for this, then no excuses, also no limit on amount of penalty, if caught there should be expectation that the business will be lost.

 

[Elecman]

Stripped bare copper cable is £6.50/kilo at present

 

[Trestrol]

Seen similar on a 25kV traction return bus bar at a feeder station. Grim.

THE problem with aluminium cable is depending on the area its in it can deteiorate quicker than copper. Most of the Alu power cable north of Newcastle has been replaced due to the salt air. Don't know if its because the sheath is plastic rather than rubber. It's also a pig to handle compared to copper. Very easy to twist.
On the subject of stealing OHL cable, somebody did try it in the Darlington are many moons ago. Used a hacksaw from a ladder. As it's under tension it pinged and fried a location case. There was a 1.1/2" hole in the door. That lived in the local training school for many years along with some fried SSI modules.

 

[Annetts key]

It would almost certainly be copper wire. While fibre-optics may be used for communication purposes, you still need copper wire to supply power to signals, point motors and track circuits or axle counters, at least to or from a local relay room.

Copper signalling or power cable is significantly heavier than fibre. As are copper paired telecom cables that have a large number of wires.

Though to my knowledge it's not been unknown for them to cut fibre optic cables not realising that they are fibre optic.

Never mind that since the time of Railtrack, all fibre optic cables are (supposed to be) marked every meter with “fibre optic cable”… By marked, embossed/marked at the time of manufacture.

Ultimately the solution to this is probably going to have to be either a dramatic increase in fencing around the railway property [which we might want anyway], or the use of railway designs that minimise the amount of places that need powered equipment.

They have been known to break or cut through fences, and fencing hundreds of miles of railway is not cheap.

Well in theory we could use GSM-R to control a lot of trackside equipment, and that would just leave us with power cables to deal with.

Copper cables will still be needed to supply power to signalling equipment and for the control of equipment like point machines.

Long distance communication is already by the railways own telecom network, which uses fibre optic cables.

Could you make whatever the cables are run through harder to access? E.g. if it's running through a trench, concrete over the top of the trench?
Or is anything that presents serious obstacles to the thieves also likely to make normal maintenance and repairs impossible?

The main problem is that cables are either run (loose) on the surface, or in surface concrete troughing (SCT) routes (like a duct, but made with concrete sections, the bottom having a U shape cross section, and a lipped lid, both of which are either 0.5 metres or 1 meter long). It’s not difficult to take the lids off and pull cables out.

There are various fixings that can be bolted together to try to prevent trespassers from taking the lids off of SCT. But a determined person can overcome the less secure types. Various ‘local’ solutions have been used from time to time. Including using BAND-IT stainless steel tape and long lengths of steel bars to make it extremely difficult to get the lids off of the SCT.

For new schemes, I would like the railway to install buried ducts (like BT use). But this costs money so does not happen.

In the past in some areas (1950s to late 1960s, but may vary across the country) the main cable routes were buried (some were 6 foot deep). Strangely enough, these don’t suffer from cable theft!

The reason the railways did this, is because even back when telegraph systems and the early telephone systems were being installed on pole routes, the copper wires were being stolen. This problem of theft continued through to the 1950s and beyond.

I think part of the problem with the GWR electrification was that the signalling cables had been buried to reduce theft, and then mast foundations were piled through them.

Part of that was the railways poor record keeping (there are supposed to be cable route diagrams), ad-hock cable renewals that did not confirm to the standards, lack of knowledge and incompetence. Unfortunately the railways have a nasty habit of drilling, cutting, or otherwise damaging their own cables. I’ve attended about as many self inflicted cable strikes as cable thefts. One funny one being an external utility company using a cable mole to install a new cable under the railway, but which cut two railway buried cables in the process! One telecom cable used for signalling circuits and a 650V signalling power cable.

Does the railway use copper or aluminium in power cables these days?

The latter are significantly less valuable to metal thieves.

All railway signalling cables are copper including the signalling 110V ac, 230V (240V) ac, 650V ac and 110V dc power distribution for the signalling equipment. We also use copper paired telecom cable for both signalling (including axle counters, remote control systems and signalling data links) as well as for telephone circuits. For long distance communications fibre-optic cable is also used. Some older long distance telecom cables are also copper.

Someone from the distribution and plant section/department should be able to tell you if they use aluminium cables for 400V (415V) three phase and higher voltage power cables. I’ve only ever seen copper 400V (415V) three phase cables used. But I’ve had no involvement with third Rail or OHL power systems.

how does the backend of long distance signal cabeling work these days?, if IP based then should be easy to design so that the data can take multible routes so breakage of a cable wouldnt take out the signalling abiet you prob want to replace the cable ASAP

Signalling systems normally only use the railways own private telecom network. Where SSI (solid state interlocking) data links are used, there are two networks and these are (supposed to be) diversely routed. This is done for reliability (and is called system redundancy), so that if one cable is cut, the system should continue working.

If the Railway resignalled for a GSMR system with In-Cab Signalling, would such a system be affected by cable theft?

You still need power cables to supply the equipment with power. For example the GSMR equipment buildings with the radio and communications equipment. And equipment like point machines still needs cables, location equipment cupboards and copper control/communications cables.

You'd still need points, and they're typically powered by transforming 650V down to the required voltages.

There are two legs, and they should be diversely routed so that a break/fire/whatever is unlikely to knock out both paths at once.

Exactly.

 

[Welly]

During the very long and protracted electrification of the OSE main line between Athens and Thessaloniki, large lengths of copper contact wire were frequently 'liberated' at night time prior to energisation.

A mainline in Pakistan was electrified to 25kV but theft of the OLE wires was so rife that the line was de-electrified! The empty masts still stand along that line. https://tribune.com.pk/story/124828/pakistan-railways-electrical-locomotives-wrapped-up

 

[Elecman]

I thought the 650 volt signalling cables were a single pair of aluminium not copper

 

[Annetts key]

I thought the 650 volt signalling cables were a single pair of aluminium not copper

I can only speak about the situation on Western, but the last time I saw the D&P working on one it was copper. And all the older (pre-Network Rail) cables are copper (many years ago the 650V network on Western was an S&T asset, then it was transferred to the D&P).

 

[Railsigns]

Aluminium 650 V signalling power cables were being installed on BR since at least the 1980s.

 

[Sonik]

You still need power cables to supply the equipment with power. For example the GSMR equipment buildings with the radio and communications equipment. And equipment like point machines still needs cables, location equipment cupboards and copper control/communications cables.

It does though have the effect of concentrating the areas where copper signal cables are used to a much smaller number of locations e.g. Junctions and Radio sites, which should in theory be much easier to secure and monitor for trespass. Radio antennas for example have copper feeders but these are bolted to the tower, making removal of significant lengths much more difficult than cable loose laid in troughing.

Fiber cables are less critical due to diverse routing. Power cables are generally less vulnerable due to the voltages involved, not that it seems to stop people trying.

So overall my hunch is that radio based ETCS should offer a substantial improvement in resilience, if not a complete solution to the problem.

 

[KeithMcC]

Power cables are generally less vulnerable due to the voltages involved, not that it seems to stop people trying.

A couple of years ago I visited a recently closed warehouse where someone had cut the 11kV cable to the substation with a disc cutter. Then found it was aluminium and lost interest in that although having got the power off they started stripping the warehouse. The security guards couldn't do anything and the police were apparently very little help.

 

[Annetts key]

It does though have the effect of concentrating the areas where copper signal cables are used to a much smaller number of locations e.g. Junctions and Radio sites, which should in theory be much easier to secure and monitor for trespass. Radio antennas for example have copper feeders but these are bolted to the tower, making removal of significant lengths much more difficult than cable loose laid in troughing.

Yes, less cables should in theory reduce the level of the problem. However, in my experience, generally speaking, cable routes in the middle of the countryside are less likely to be attacked. It’s town and city urban and suburban areas where we normally have the most problems. Unfortunately a significant number of complex junctions are in these areas.

Fiber cables are less critical due to diverse routing.

Not all areas have an alternative route. And not all signalling systems support data being diverse routed. If the fibre-optic cable is carrying fibres leased to other telecom companies, its often more expensive to the railways for the penalty payments to the telecom companies than the disruption to the train services.

Power cables are generally less vulnerable due to the voltages involved, not that it seems to stop people trying.

Unfortunately some of the idiots that attempt cable theft don’t appear to know this. I know of an attempted theft of a live 11kV railway cable.

But we’ve had a different person who obviously did know, as they cut a 650V cable and connected some domestic twin and earth cable in it’s place. They then stole the length of bypassed 650V cable…

Then there’s the idiots that open a cable route, chop multiple cables with a hacksaw, try to drag some of the cables along the track, then either get disturbed and run off, or give up because the cable is too heavy. So they put a bit of effort in, risk their life, but leave with nothing.

 

[alxndr]

I thought the 650 volt signalling cables were a single pair of aluminium not copper

It matters more what the thieves think they're made of rather than what they're actually made of. It might stop thieves bothering a second time if they discover that they're not copper but it doesn't stop that first attempt, or the next person trying their hand at stealing them.