The Great Penshaw Railway Robbery, how a group of thieves stolen two miles of track in a perfect disguise.

Scrap thieves are notorious for being able to salvage anything they can get their hands on, just ask the people of Ryhope! Besides slicing down pit pony sculptures, some bad eggs give scrappies a bad reputation in general because some of them “accidentally” tend to take things they shouldn’t when trawling people’s homes and drive ways.

But in Penshaw, in 2003, the theft of scrap was taken a whole new level, when thieves successfully pillaged two miles of the former Leamside Railway track valued at over £250,000 and weighing over 313 tonnes. Six men teamed together to fulfill this extraordinary heist, spearheaded by Glen Pendleton of Houghton Le Spring who was a maintenance worker.

Because of Glen’s career, the team were able to alleviate suspicions by posing as actual workers dressed in high visibility gear and were able to operate over a number of days removing the track pieces, using specialist equipment including JCBs and diggers to do so. Having recruited his team from Sheffield, their goal was to ship it back to Yorkshire and sell it for scrap there.

However, their disguise was rumbled when an actual railway maintenance worker spotted them and realised that the work was not sanctioned, leading them to report it. Police soon intercepted them on the scene and arrested three of them. Glen, the mastermind, was sentenced to two years in prison. Another man received 15 months.

Although the stolen material was recovered, it had been cut up and could not be re-laid. Ironically, this means it would probably have been sold as scrap in the end, presumably to compensate for the damage. Despite this, the now 20 year old theft has undoubtedly set back the leamside line’s reopening by drastically increasing the costs of doing so, with two sections of track needing to be relaid at an estimated cost of £800,000.