Police run night time 'ghost trains' to catch metal thieves

PA

Undercover police are travelling on special night time trains in a bid to catch the scrap-metal thieves who are causing chaos for rail passengers.

The 'ghost trains' are four carriages long and carry a team of four officers from British Transport Police and Network Rail.

They travel late at night with their lights dimmed and their engines muffled to allow officers with infrared cameras to catch thieves in the act.

The team are in radio contact with police vehicles, which follow the train's route by road, ready to chase any criminals who attempt to flee.

In the last seven months alone, 1,969 trains have been cancelled because of 675 copper cable thefts and police figures show 14 times more copper-cable burglaries have taken place in Britain this year compared with five years ago.

Matthew Dickerson, head of Network Rail's cable-theft task force in East Anglia, said: "It is a tactic we are increasingly using to counter metal thieves as well as to provide a deterrent. We previously used the trains during the day to prevent vandalism or trespassing but now 80 per cent of operations are aimed at preventing cable thefts at night. It is an effective strategy."

Criminals are willing to risk their lives to steal the copper lined cables on railways because the price of copper has doubled in the past two years.

This has left Network Rail, which owns and operates Britain's rail network, with a £10.1million bill, which it admits will be passed on to passengers.

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