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The Great Model Train Robbery

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Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#11

Post by olivermarks »

AustinCarr wrote: post #8
0xcafecafe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inves…

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 tra…

Hertfordshire police - absolutely pathetic...

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#12

Post by AustinCarr »

olivermarks wrote: post #10
AustinCarr wrote: post #3

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= This may be a good instance where additional online sleuthing could help solve the crime. If you have any thoughts/tips…

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/MWCUXoNZYi…

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.

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#13

Post by NeedMoreTea »

AustinCarr wrote: post #3

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= This may be a good instance where additional online sleuthing could help solve the crime. If you have any thoughts/tips…

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.

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#15

Post by EdwardDiego »

joewee wrote: post #6

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.

> 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.

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#16

Post by pbalau »

olivermarks wrote: post #10
AustinCarr wrote: post #3

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= This may be a good instance where additional online sleuthing could help solve the crime. If you have any thoughts/tips…

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/MWCUXoNZYi…

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.

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#17

Post by baud147258 »

AustinCarr wrote: post #3

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= This may be a good instance where additional online sleuthing could help solve the crime. If you have any thoughts/tips…

I found the article too long by half and not very compelling to read, so I just skimmed it quickly

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#18

Post by girvo »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #15
joewee wrote: post #6

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#19

Post by olivermarks »

pbalau wrote: post #16
olivermarks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/MWCUXoNZYi…

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 cl…

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

Re: The Great Model Train Robbery

#20

Post by joewee »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #15
joewee wrote: post #6

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.

> 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.

And also based in the experiences of many others that have been shared with me. As can be seen in this story and the other comments on this thread.
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