Australian Rail Track Corporation issues plea to public to prevent copper wire theft from North-East rail line

The track owners, Australian Rail Track Corporation, has issued a plea for people to report any suspicious behaviour around the rail corridor after a spate of line wire theft impacted passenger services in March.

Thefts are costing tens of thousands of dollars each year with stolen copper wire likely to be sold to the lucrative recycling market.

ARTC group executive Jonathan Vandervoort said signalling line wire theft was a persistent, dangerous, expensive and difficult issue for the rail industry.

“It causes significant disruption to rail operations, imposes large costs on rail network operators like ourselves and affects all of the community through delays, level crossing impacts and other factors,” he said.

“It seriously affects train punctuality. For example, delays of between 20 and 85 minutes were incurred to passenger services on March 24 and 29 due to two different incidents of line wire theft at Wallan.”

Measures to try avoid these incidents include security patrols and signalling technicians on standby.

But Mr Vandervoort said it can still be difficult to prevent.

“That’s why we are asking for the community’s support and would like to encourage members of the public to stay vigilant and report any suspicious activity around the rail corridor to Crime Stoppers,” he said.

Other reasons for train punctuality issues in March included impacts by freight services, passenger and operator related delays, trees falling on the track and a member of the public’s car getting bogged on the track.

“These incidents in March give a good insight into the range of unexpected issues that can impact the reliability of all of our customers,”  Mr Vandervoort said.

“This data and information has been part of the information fed into the process around future investment commitments to the North-East rail line.

“Addressing issues like line wire theft has a direct correlation with train running performance.”