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Two teens steal locomotive


Harvey Wallbanger

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I thought people might find this interesting...

 

 

 

 

It was 1:15 a.m., and the Great Train Robbery was under way.

 

In his home near the tracks in Nelsonville, Bill Evans, awakened by two blasts from the engine’s air horn, bolted out of bed.

 

The president and conductor of the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway knew one of his engines should not be running the tracks at that hour.

 

Two runaway boys with an apparent taste for super-size joy rides were at the controls of the dark blue, 125-ton locomotive with yellow stripes. They were headed for Logan.

 

With a 16-year-old pushing all the right buttons and levers, and his 13-year-old accomplice riding shotgun, the engine rumbled up the line.

 

Hocking County Sheriff’s Sgt. Eric Matheny waited at a crossing and flicked on his cruiser’s spotlight. He saw someone in the cab as the engine went past at 25 to 30 mph.

 

The chase was on, with Matheny attempting to keep the locomotive in sight from side roads near the tracks as the engine passed through five crossings.

 

Finally, 12 miles outside of Nelsonville, the one-time Chesapeake & Ohio engine pulled to a stop. The boys, with hands in the air, surrendered to Matheny near Rts. 33 and 328 at the edge of Logan.

 

Had they ventured into the Logan rail yards, their ride would have hit a device that was placed on the tracks to derail the engine and head off a collision with another train. An Indiana & Ohio train was due to arrive at 3 a.m.

 

The boys’ excursion early yesterday astonished Evans, an old railroad man, as well as Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren.

 

"It’s unbelievable," Evans said. "They had to know what they were doing."

 

The 16-year-old, Eric Burks, told authorities that he comes from a family of railroaders and had worked with relatives in the rail yards in Lawrence County.

 

Burks and 13-year-old Zachary Walden were charged with running away from the Hocking Valley Community Residential Center in Nelsonville about 8:30 p.m. Monday.

 

The boys slipped out of the unsecured center for nonviolent delinquents while employees were preoccupied with looking for two other youths who ran away about a half-hour earlier.

 

They apparently hid for a few hours and then headed for the locomotive house of the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway, which offers pleasure and sightseeing rides.

 

Patrolman John Meeks, of the Nelsonville Police Department, said the boys used a pipe to pry open a door, opened an overhead door and fired up the 1950s-vintage diesel engine.

 

They tried to head toward Athens, but the tracks dead-end nearby. They backed up, only to find the tracks to Logan blocked at the depot by passenger cars and a caboose.

 

The boys coupled the cars to the engine and, breaking locks off rail switches, maneuvered the cars onto a side rail and then headed out.

 

Prosecutor Warren could not believe what he was hearing when police called him at 4 a.m. "They had to run it by me a couple of times before I caught on.

 

"This is a new one on me. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and never had anyone steal a train."

 

Burks and Walden appeared in Athens County Juvenile Court yesterday. A judge ordered them returned to the custody of their home counties of Lawrence and Scioto, respectively.

 

Each is charged with delinquency counts of grand theft (the locomotive is valued at $198,000), breaking and entering and escape. The locomotive suffered only scratched paint.

 

Evans saw some irony in the incident.

 

The Hocking Valley Scenic Railway offers tourists the opportunity to ride on "Great Train Robbery" trips, during which armed desperadoes on horseback pursue the train and board it after it stops.

 

The bandits relieve passengers of fake money they have been handed before making their escape.

 

"But I never thought we would have a real robbery," Evans said.

 

 

 

Sorry, I just realised that I posted this in the wrong forum. Hopefully we can get a move.

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I thought people might find this interesting...

 

 

They tried to head toward Athens, but the tracks dead-end nearby. They backed up, only to find the tracks to Logan blocked at the depot by passenger cars and a caboose.

 

The boys coupled the cars to the engine and, breaking locks off rail switches, maneuvered the cars onto a side rail and then headed out.

 

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this is the best part. they didnt just hijack the thing, they had to fucking switch cars out of the way before they could go anywhere!

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if you really wanted to steal an engine it wouldnt be that hard, assuming you know "the right buttons"...during crew change, engines are left unattended regularly. sometimes for days at a time the engines are left popping and snapping. obviously, being on a track makes taking one pretty stupid, theres no outrunning something when you're railed to a particular path. good story, i wondered when i'd read about something like this...has anyone ever seen the movied "end of the line"?

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