The 1308 Trust have announced the devastating news that metal thieves have broken into their base at Rocks By Rail and have stolen a number of parts of their Hudswell Clarke & Co steam locomotive No.1308 ‘RHOS’, which they are restoring.
Between the night of Tuesday 13th March and the morning of Thursday 15th March 2018, the metal thieves broke into storage units housing the parts at Rocks By Rail, the Living Ironstone Museum at Cottesmore, in Rutland.
The list of the missing parts is very extensive, with most of them being stamped with the locomotives makers number.
The trust and people involved with the trust are urging anyone in the preservation world who is offered these components to ring the police.
If you know anything about this upsetting news, please contact Leicestershire Constabulary on 101 or Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111, the crime reference is 18000118895.
What has been stolen?
The items include:
- Vacuum exhauster
- Vacuum setter and handle
- Vacuum relief valve
- Non Return Valve for Vacuum system
- Vacuum gauge
- Steam pressure gauge
- Turret for locomotive
- Blower valve
- Steam whistle valve
- Steam locomotive whistle
- 2 X Water valves
- 2 X steam injectors
- 2 X steam inlet valves
- 2 X sets of water gauge frames
- 2 X sets water gauge frame protectors
- Steam brake valve
- Blowdown valve for locomotive boiler
- Left Hand and Right-hand big end brasses
- Left and Right hand leading coupling rod bearings
- Left and right Hand driving coupling rod bearings
- Left and Right hand trailing coupling rod bearings
- Piston steam glands left and right hand
- 8 X Non return valves from oil lubrication system
- Left and right hand little end bearings
- 2 X main steam pipes from boiler to valve chests
- 2 X steam feed pipes to injectors
- 2 X injector feed pipes from injectors to clack valves
- Phosphor bronze stock material various sizes and lengths
- Copper tube approx. 5” diameter 2 ft. long
- Large rivet gun (backing up gun)
- Smaller rivet gun
- Bag of propane/oxygen burning gear
Please help if you can 🙂
- Visit the 1308 Trust website
For more information - Visit the RailAdvent news homepage
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Having read both these articles relating to break ins at preservation centre’s the thing to do would be visit all known scrap merchants and try to establish a relationship for them to look out on your behalf,and you could put up a reward to draw some one out with information. Future security needs reviewing ,I know how disappointing all this must be and my sympathy is with you I my self have been involved with railway preservation in the past and we too sustained break ins. I can only wish you success in catching the culprits which usually originate from a particular sector of society who deal in scrap metal good luck and best wishes to all involved for the future .
I dont have a specific answer, but a similar hit took place at Avon Valley Railway at Bitton Bristol.
The perpetrators clearly had an objective as I understand it , very specific things,were taken , certain containers were broken into but not others, showing that a person knew what they were looking for . Some irrelevant stuff was taken as if to make it look like metal theives.
Most of this stuff is bronze and the price is up at the moment , plus this stuff is heavy so the weigh in is a good bounty .
My view is always follow the money !!!