Railway cable thief caught by hidden camera

A man caught on a police surveillance camera returning to collect 47m of stolen railway cable he had found earlier has been jailed for seven months.

A court heard John McCorgray dumped the bag of cables in woodland after they became difficult to carry.

McCorgray had discovered the cables while walking near the Edinburgh to Perth mainline.

Engineers realised the wire was missing after attending a fault on the line.

Prosecutor Ann Orr said it had cost Network Rail £7,000 to replace the stolen cables.

McCorgray, 51, of Bannockburn, admitted theft by finding.

Stirling Sheriff Court was told that the engineers investigating the fault at Plean, Stirlingshire on 3 February found that 65m of wire was missing from the track.

A police search was carried out the following day and the sack containing 47m of wiring was found in nearby woodland.

Officers positioned a secret camera nearby and McCorgray was caught returning to the sack.

Sheriff Wyllie Robertson described McCorgray as a "persistent repeat thief" with over 40 previous convictions for dishonesty.

He said: "You pleaded guilty to theft by finding. The understanding is that's a less serious matter than the actual theft of this copper wire from the railway line.

"But you've come across a considerable amount of copper wire and instead of saying 'I must report this to the police or the authorities' you've decided 'I could try to sell that'.

"Of course it was too heavy for you, but you moved it some distance, and so the theft is completed."

A Network Rail spokesman said: "We continually seek to develop ways to protect the network from thieves and work with the British Transport Police to prosecute anyone caught carrying out metal thefts."