#Railway Crime

[sudriantraveler]

The Cronk & Harwick Railway: The Railway to Insanity

The Cronk & Harwick Railway Is one of those bits of RWS lore which I find really interesting, mainly because we know so little about it, which leaves plenty of room for headcanon. But before diving into any of that, let's see what the IOS book has to say about Harwick and its railway.

So first of all, based on the name of this railway, was the original plan to try to build the line all the way to Cronk? Because that is a pretty long distance for a railway located in probably the most off the beaten path part of the entire island, and which, presumably, was never all that financially prosperous.

Secondly, the railway was horse drawn. I’m going to change this for my own headcanon, and instead say the railway switched to steam engines somewhere around the beginning of the 1900s. I’m not entirely sure what I want their locomotive fleet to be specifically, but I wonder if one of the Sodor and Mainland’s box tanks could have ended up here. In any case I imagine the engines of this line are a hodgepodge of second, third, or even fourth hand engines of ridiculously antiquated designs, all held together with duct tape and prayers! Also, I think it would be fitting for the C&H to at some point acquire a pair of railmotors similar to ones used on Colonel Stephens’ light railways.

Finally, the line was apparently pulled up for scrap at some point during World War II. I would like to propose that instead of being truly scrapped, whoever the owner of this railway was actually pulled off the biggest con in the island's history! Let me explain.

During World War II the British Government wanted to tear up the old line for scrap metal to serve the war effort. The owner sold the tracks to them, but at a cost significantly higher than what they were actually worth. He kept possession of the railways right-of-way however. The railways engines were also supposed to be scrapped, but the owner claimed they had been completely destroyed by a German bomber, and pointed to the railways’ blown up sheds as proof. It was a bit weird that only the sheds had been hit… and that no one had either seen or heard any planes overhead… and that the Cregwir Quarry coincidently “misplaced” some several boxes of dynamite the night before, which were never found. However, there was a war on, and frankly, the military had more pressing matters to deal with than the sketchy behavior of a disused backwater railway which was going to be torn up anyway.

So the line was scrapped, and for the remainder of the war nothing particularly unusual happened around Harwick. The naval base which had been established there was small, and only ever housed a handful of small coastal patrol vessels, the crews of which never really ventured far out of the town. But shortly after the war had ended, and the Royal Navy was out of sight, strange things began to occur on railways all over the island. The NWR had begun a program of repairing and relaying their tracks, which had become worn out during the war. At works sites all across the railway, several segments of old rails and sleepers, which had been taken up during the day, began to go missing in the night. A shipment of bricks for the rebuilding of some of the NWR’s goods sheds conspicuously never arrived, and the Skarloey Railway reported that a small stockpile of slate seemed to have simply vanished. On the Mid Sodor Railway, the long abandoned Mountain Road, which had its rails and sleepers removed in the late 30s, was mysteriously stripped clean of all its remaining ballast. The Mid Sodor, however, was too busy going bankrupt at the time to really take much notice.

Up in Harwick however, a remarkable rebirth had occurred, with rails once again running alongside the river all the way to Cregwir. Also, as it turned out, the death of the line's old engines had been greatly exaggerated, and they were found (due to some clerical error no doubt) to have instead been stored in a disused mine-shaft up at Cregwir, where they had miraculously remained in good working order (or atleast, good by the standards of the C&H, which wasn’t saying much). The revitalized railway had even built a brand new engine shed to replace the one which had been destroyed, made of bricks and complete with a slate roof… yeah…

Nothing could ever be proven however, and so the Cronk & Harwick Railway was back! Needless to say, the NWR and the Skarloey refused to ever do business with the revitalized railway. When asked by Awdry during his research The Fat Controller refused to even admit the railway was still in existence, hence why it’s marked as abandoned on most maps, if it's even marked at all! It's possible that one of the reasons the NWR never extended up to Harwick is because doing so would have almost certainly meant having to deal with the C&H. 

Despite this, the C&H has continued to survive. How? Well, that’s a question which many have asked, but it has become accepted wisdom on Sodor that you should not go looking for an explanation. For those who have tried have all ended up becoming obsessed and throwing themselves head first into their research, isolating themselves from society and wasting further and further away. Until they finally re-emerge from their studies into the outside world, having gone completely insane after finally concluding that logic and sanity had simply given up on the Cronk & Harwick and that so too must they give up on logic and sanity!

Since then the railway has led a mostly uneventful life (at least by Sodor’s standards), though it is still as ramshackle an operation as ever, and there have periodically been rumors of the old owner hiding stores of cash and maybe even some gold in the surrounding caves! Again, nothing has ever been proven, and the old owner has since been succeeded by his daughter, who has a slightly better reputation. Needless to say though, the railway has certainly lived up to its long standing nickname of The Old Crooked and Horrible! In recent years they’ve even taken to flying the Jolly Roger over their definitely not stolen engine shed!

[townpostin]

Shocking Sexual Assault on Utkal Express: Pantry Worker Arrested

Differently-Abled Passenger Rescued from Attempted Rape in Train Bathroom A pantry car employee faces charges after allegedly attempting to rape a differently-abled woman on the Utkal Express, sparking outrage and swift police action. JAMSHEDPUR – On the Utkal Express, an alleged rape attempt was made by a pantry worker against a differently-abled passenger in the train’s restroom. The incident…

[scavengedluxury]

Biatorbágy railway viaduct after the fatal derailment of the Vienna Express on September 13, 1931 by mass murderer Szilveszter Matuska. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

North Korean M1989 Koksan 170 mm self-propelled guns being transported by train, Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Russia, 2024. Source: Special Kherson Cat

P.S. Russian sources share photo which suggests that North Korea has began shipping M-1978 Koksan 170 mm self-propelled gun of North Korean manufacture to Russia. Visually those are very similar to 2S7 Pion 203mm SPG...

While North Korea's communists are suppling the Kremlin with artillery and soldiers penny pinching Western media outlets are busy to spread B.-S. advertisements of dumb billionaires and celebrities..., and endless complaints that Ukrainians are defending their nations independence and freedom way too efficiently...

The modern Western political and business elite have betrayed the "free world" and it looks so pathetically helpless and deeply corrupt...

[denimbex1986]

'David Tennant and Catherine Tate pay tribute to Bernard Cribbins after his posthumous appearance in Doctor Who's 60th anniversary special, "Wild Blue Yonder." In the special, Cribbins briefly reprises his role as Wilfred Mott, the grandfather of Donna Noble (Tate) and longtime friend of the Doctor (Tennant). Sadly, Cribbins passed away on July 27, 2022, making his return as Mott his final TV appearance. He first began portraying the character in 2007 alongside Tennant's Doctor, which adds an emotional layer to their 60th anniversary reunion.

While appearing on Doctor Who: Unleashed, Tennant and Tate paid tribute to their late Doctor Who 60th anniversary co-star following the premiere of "Wild Blue Yonder." Tennant describes how "delighted" they were when they learned Cribbins was returning for the special, while Tate explained that she and Tennant had grown up watching Cribbins' works as children. Check out their statements below:

Tennant: We were beyond delighted when we knew that Bernard was going to be able to come back. It means so much to me, personally, and I think to the show as a whole, really, that he was there. That character meant so much to so many people.

Tate: Bernard will always, obviously, hold a very special place in my heart, because he always did, even before I knew him, because David and I kind of grew up with watching Bernard on TV, and he was the voice of the Wombles and loads of stuff that would define our childhood. And so having him play my grandad was amazing.

Bernard Cribbins' Doctor Who Legacy

Cribbins left behind quite a legacy following his decades-long career, in which he appeared in notable works such as The Railway Children and Frenzy. Additionally, as Tennant described, he held a special place in the Doctor Who universe. His experience with the franchise actually began back in 1966 when he starred in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. The film wasn't canon to the Doctor Who TV series, but it was inspired by the show and marked Cribbins' first stint as a companion of the Doctor. Little did he know that over 41 years later, he'd become an official Doctor Who companion.

Cribbins first appeared in Doctor Who as Mott in the Christmas special "Voyage of the Damned." He was running a newspaper stand in London and was revealed to be one of the few residents remaining in the city over the holidays despite all the extraterrestrial happenings. The Doctor teleported away then, leaving Mott perplexed. However, that wasn't the end of the story. He returned in Doctor Who season 4, episode 1, "Partners in Crime," where it's revealed he is Donna's grandfather. With his interests in astronomy and alien conspiracy theories, he wholeheartedly supports Donna's desire to travel the world with the Doctor.

Occasionally joining their adventures, Mott fought Daleks, made daring escapes, and later helped save Donna's life by ensuring she wouldn't remember the Doctor. However, he was drawn to the Doctor again in "The End of Time" and became his temporary companion. Ultimately, the Doctor sacrifices his life to save Mott, a decision the Time Lord never regretted. "Wild Blue Yonder" brings Mott's story full circle as it's revealed his faith in the Doctor never wavered. His Doctor Who story ends with his reunion with the Doctor and his hope that the world will be saved again.

Note

Showrunner Russell T Davies has confirmed Mott will be mentioned in the final Doctor Who 60th anniversary special, but he won't appear onscreen as Cribbens only filmed one scene.'

[number1spongebobfan]

Mike the punk train.

[esteemed-excellency]

For Hiram! ⚓️ and 🎟️!

⚓️ Which faction is your OC closest to?

He's closest to hell, and most renown with the great game.

🎟️ Have they written anything for the Shuttered Palace’s court?

Hiram accepted all kinds of commissions to increase his reputation at court, as soon as he got back in touch with society after the fall. He always was a decent writer but he refined his talent and he got the hang of music composition too, favouring symphonic poems and waltzes. The literary works he's most proud of are A Nocturnal Rhapsody, A Gothic Romance, and A Bazaarine Tale. He also helped Tristram Bagley/the Topsy King to complete his unfinished masterpiece.

Needless to say, he was immediately interested about moving pictures when they were first presented in London and he instantly got into films.

He doesn't care for the position of Poet Laureate at the moment, he prefers to write academic dissertations and research journals, but it could be a nice opportunity for the future, you never know.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"TRAIN WRECKER GETS TWO YEARS," Sault Star. May 6, 1912. Page 1. --- Found guilty of attempting to derail an A. C. R. train at Hobon last week, Mike Dunbovitch was this morning sentenced by Magistrate Mackey to spend two years in Kingston Penitentiary.

Dunbovitch was previously in the employ of the O'Boyle Construction Co., but had been discharged. He tried to derail the train by plugging a switch. He was arrested by Provincial Constable Connor.

[AL: Dunbovitch or Dunbodie was an 'Austrian' immigrant to Canada, 20 years old and unemployed; this was his first offence. He was actually convicted of breaking locks and stealing a railway handcar. He was convict #F-389 at Kingston Penitentiary and worked in the quarry and trucking gang. He was a very poorly behaved according to prison rules - he was 'admonished' (reported and lectured) five times between June and October. He was reported again in November and December and lost his 'good time.' He was put in solitary for 12 days in February 1913, and again in March and April. Finally, he was transferred in mid-April 1913 to the high security permanent segregation unit - the Prison of Isolation. A few days later he was given 7 days bread and water in his cell. He was kept in Isolation for the rest of the year, and released at the almost full extent of his sentence in April 1914.]

[kariganleclair]

It always baffles me when people say things like there's no money in rail and it's so slow. Clearly (and I really shouldn't be surprised by this) they have forgotten that many of those Gilded Age business tycoons they hold up as paragons of capitalism built the empires they had on railways, both by building them and using them. Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was richer than Bill Gates ever thought of being, was a shipping and railroad magnate. His youngest son, George Vanderbilt, who inherited a paltry $10 million from his father built the damn Biltmore Estate with railroad money. You want to know what is literally just on the other side of the river from that? That's right a large railyard that has several large freight trains that go through it on a regular basis. Asheville as we know it today was built around the railroad and transportation industry which allowed for TOURISM to become a major industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by MAKING IT EASIER AND MORE AFFORDABLE for people to go places and have money to spend. Hey look, more economical impact. But since the rail industry has faded into the golden glow of nostalgia, relegated to being conceived as a quaint, slow, dying industry and Americans are all about the next new shiny thing (if ever there was a poster child country for ADD it's us), it's easy enough to go along with the governments need for fast cash for the short term rather than taking the time and effort to invest in long term endeavors that would actually benefit us well into the future, but since they are largely old, rich, white guys who are looking at living only another decade or so, they don't give a damn about the rest of us or one of the industries that built this country, for both good and bad. No, I am not salty about this at all.

So do people realize that we aren't building new train tracks when we expand the amteak network, I have multiple times seen people say that we shouldn't expand the network because it would destroy protected lands, which would be a fair criticism but Amtrak doesn't build new tracks, we use existing tracks. We are not destroying protected lands, we are using land that has already been clear for a century

[youthchronical]

A.P. man, daughter held for murdering woman, dumping body at Minjur railway station

The suitcase which carried the elderly woman’s body at Minjur railway station | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement The Government Railway Police in Chennai’s Korukkupet have arrested a 43-year-old goldsmith and his 17-year-old daughter for allegedly murdering an elderly woman, transporting her body in a suitcase via a suburban train from Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, and attempting to abandon it in…

[indianfasttrack]

मुंबई सेंट्रल के एसी वेटिंग रूम में महिला से छेड़छाड़

ट्रेन में अकेली लड़की को देखकर दोस्ती और भरोसा हासिल करने के बाद मुंबई सेंट्रल रेलवे स्टेशन के एसी वेटिंग रूम मे लेजाकर अश्लील हरकत के खिलाफ मामला दर्ज .. (Mumbai News, Woman molested in Mumbai Central Railway Station AC waiting room, FIR registered) इस्माईल शेखमुंबई- बॉम्बे सेंट्रल रेलवे स्टेशन पर एक 20 वर्षीय महिला के साथ अश्लील हरकत करने वाले 21 वर्षीय आरोपी संजय सिंह के खिलाफ मुंबई सेंट्रल…

[tudorblogger]

‘The Stationmaster’s Farewell’ by Edward Marston

Genre: Adult Fiction – Historical Mystery Published: 2012 Format: Paperback Rating: ★★★★ Another really enjoyable Railway Detective mystery. I thought I knew who the killer was but once again I was wrong! I just can’t seem to see where the story is going to end up. But that is part of the fun of the series. It keeps you on your toes, even when you think you know what’s going on and who’s at…

[townpostin]

Human Trafficker with 6 Children Arrested at Tatanagar Railway Station

Suspect from West Bengal nabbed with six minors en route to Delhi. A man from Malda, West Bengal, was arrested at Tatanagar railway station with six minor children, suspected of trafficking them to Delhi. JAMSHEDPUR – A resident of Nazaruddin Tola in Malda, West Bengal, was apprehended at Tatanagar railway station with six minor children, allegedly trafficking them to Delhi for work. Police…

[histoireettralala]

They should do a movie about "le tueur de l'Oise". He was a guy who killed, robbed, attacked, fashioned explosive devices, wrote threatening letters, etc... who led the gendarmes and police through a wild chase for months before getting caught. There would be a rising suspicion among squads, a high-pressure chase through swampy areas, exploding cars, girls falling out of cars, and the final reveal would happen in the most dramatic fashion.

It happened in the late 1970s in the Oise département, north-east of Paris, right on the heels of another case that terrorised the region, the Shadow Killer.

[rebel-bulletin]

रेल्वे तिकिटांसह दलालांना अटक

गोंदिया : आमगाव येथील इंदिरानगर येथून बनावटी रेल्वे तिकीट तयार करणार्‍या दलालासह २४ हजार ३३१ रुपये किमतीचे ५७ तिकीटे जप्त करण्यात आले. ही कारवाई रेल्वे सुरक्षा दलाने २ एप्रिल रोजी केली. प्रवास सुखकर व सुरक्षित व्हावा, यासाठी रेल्वेचे आरक्षण हा प्रवाशांसाठी नेहमीच चिंतेचा राहते. याचाच लाभ उचलत काही दलाल बनावटी तिकीटांची विक्री करीत असल्याच्या घटना उघडकीस आल्या आहेत. (Brokers arrested with railway…

[trollprincess]

So I have a friend from high school who is a cop. (Yes, I KNOW.) I shared a photo on Facebook of a packed highway of people attempting to evacuate from Hurricane Milton, all while the lanes going in the opposite direction were open and empty. And my Facebook post was basically me screaming, “Open the other side of the highway and reverse it so that people can GET OUT.”

His response was essentially, “Yeah, that is *really* difficult for us to do.” Not in a condescending way, because he genuinely isn’t a huge asshole. (Yes, I KNOW.)

And then I may have vented in my response, in which I tried not to imply that the police were a problem. Because to be honest, I don’t see this as a police problem. I see this as how we have fucked ourselves as a nation by making ourselves so dependent on cars.

There is that poll on this site – or multiple polls, at this point – asking how long people can tolerate being in their cars. And the thing is, Americans (and Canadians as well, I am imagining) have almost no other options. We have to be used to spending a good 12 hours in a car without breaking a sweat. Everything in this country is built around being in a car. There’s a reason when you ask us how far away a place is from somewhere else, we normally give that distance in hours and not miles.

Air travel sucks. It sucks for a multitude of reasons – cost, the hassle of dealing with security, the time suck, etc. – and in an emergency, only a select few are going to be able to use it to get away from a hurricane. And that’s one of the few disasters where air travel is an optional escape.

Train travel sucks. Amtrak is not something you’re gonna be complaining about if you’re trying to get away from whatever disaster you need to evacuate from. But next to so many other countries, Amtrak looks like we’ve been receiving other countries’s leftover railway systems from the 70s. It also doesn’t go everywhere. I live in northeastern Pennsylvania near Scranton, which prides itself on its history in the train industry. We have a museum and everything. We have multiple things named after that museum, including the Steamtown marathon which is happening tomorrow.

Can you get on a passenger train in Scranton? Nope.

(The main argument against this always seems to be that people will come here from New York City and commit crimes, which is hilarious considering if somebody wanted to come here from New York City and commit crimes it’s only a 2.5-hour drive.)

Anyway, disasters.

If the only option you’re gonna give most people to get out of areas of Florida that are being targeted by hurricanes or areas of California that suffer from wildfires or places in the Midwest that face flooding are cars, then we need a better fucking emergency management system regarding transportation in this country. You can’t just sit there and mock people for not evacuating because they can’t or won’t when getting away from Milton meant sitting on highway for hours with absolutely no gas stations whatsoever nearby having any gas at all. (It just makes me think of those photos of people stranded on the highway in their cars in blizzards where people are like, “Now imagine imagine how bad it would be if all of those cars were electric!“ Well, all of those cars in that photo in that blizzard run on gas and they’re fucking stranded, sooooooo.)

Look, we can change the transportation system in this country. we did it before and we can do it again. We used to have more train options, fewer highways. My small hometown had a fucking trolley in the 40s. Now, if you don’t have a car here, you’re stuck. You can’t even get Uber here. if a wildfire started here and surrounded the town, it would be a clusterfuck.

Regardless of how you feel about the police, if police and fire departments in this country cannot organize an evacuation on a highway in a way that will reduce the backup so that tens of thousands of people aren’t sitting in their cars when a hurricane hits, that’s a problem – not just for those people, but for the police, and the fire department, and emergency management in general.

The people in charge of emergency management are just people, just human. I’m researching the Camp Fire in 2018 right now, and you had a bunch of people calling 911 saying, “I can see a huge fire off to the east. Are we safe? Should we evacuate?” The 911 operators could only work off the information they had. They could have told people to evacuate earlier, but Cal Fire didn’t anticipate the strength of the fire. Which is understandable. Nobody could anticipate the strength of that fire. But the 911 operators were sitting in an office with no windows, and they had no idea what was going on the east. They couldn’t look out and see exactly what was happening. If they could have, they probably would have told people to leave as soon as possible much sooner than they were told to. Instead, they waited for official confirmation, and when they did start telling people to evacuate, traffic managed to back up in a small town of 25,000 people until many of them were trapped in an unimaginable hellscape.

When people need to evacuate from a disaster, and they stay instead, far too many people - including those in positions of power – just kind of wave their hands and say, “Well, we tried.” No, we didn’t. This country made not trying its watchword, and now we’re at a point where unless you own a car, which is a luxury a lot of people cannot afford in this economy, escaping from disaster is impossible. So you can get in your car or somebody else’s car and go sit on a highway and hope your gas doesn’t run out, since none of the gas stations for 100 miles have any gas to give you, or you can stay in your house and hope you don’t die.

Sometimes, I really wish somebody would make me the head of the department of transportation. I would demand an absurd amount of money to build a better train system, to provide better transportation options for smaller towns, to provide extensive training for rescue personnel in managing evacuations like the clusterfuck in Florida this week. I would become an absolute fucking nuisance to Congress. I would be asking for money left and right to make it so that our only options as Americans weren’t to get into cars we can barely afford these days and attempt to organize our own evacuations from the growing number of natural disasters in this country.

Y’all keep posting these polls about how long you can tolerate being in a car at the same time that tens of thousands of Floridians were sitting on highways trying to get away from Tampa so they wouldn’t die in a hurricane.

We can tolerate being in a car all goddamn day. It’s because we don’t have a fucking choice, even when it’s life or death.