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Friday 20 Nov 2015

£30,000 reward offered for help catching railway arsonist

Region & Route:

| National

| North West & Central

A £30,000 reward is being offered for help catching an arsonist who caused widespread misery to train passengers across England and Scotland this week.

On Monday (16 November) two fires were started beside the railway at Canley, which disabled all train signalling equipment between Coventry and Birmingham.

Hundreds of thousands of train passengers’ journeys were disrupted after train services were reduced from six an hour to two through the area. Impacts were felt by customers as far north as Glasgow and as far south as London on the West Coast main line.

Today Network Rail and Virgin Trains announced they were each offering £15,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to the successful prosecution of those responsible.

Martin Frobisher, Network Rail’s route managing director, said: “We want help finding the person who did this. Monday’s fire caused misery to hundreds of thousands of passengers. We want to do all we can to stop this kind of mindless vandalism happening again. As well as causing huge disruption to customers, it also cost Network Rail more than £1.1m in compensation payments to train companies, money which could have been spent on further improvements to the railway. So, please, if you know anything about this incident, let British Transport Police know as soon as possible.”

Phil Bearpark, of Virgin Trains West Coast, said: “We owe it to our customers to work with our industry colleagues to do all we can to identify the perpetrators of such needless and costly vandalism. We thank our customers for their patience and understanding and our staff for their efforts to look after those whose services were affected."

Detective Inspector Gareth Davies from BTP said: “This is not a victimless attack on railway infrastructure. It would have caused misery to a lot of people’s lives that day and we will never know the number of long awaited hospital appointments, job interviews or overdue family gatherings - all cancelled because of the mindless actions of one individual.

“Since the first incident in May, we have been working hard to find the person responsible, including house to house enquiries, CCTV trawls, media appeals and scenes of crime analysis.

“The railway is a dangerous place and whoever is doing this is putting themselves at great risk. I’m certain someone out there knows who is behind these attacks and I’d urge them to come forward – not only so we can put a stop to these crimes but also to prevent anyone from being seriously hurt.”

Monday’s arson attacks were a replica of a similar incident in May this year which also caused significant delays to passengers.

Anyone with information is asked to contact British Transport Police on 0800 40 50 40, or text 61016, quoting background log MSUB/B2 of 16/11. Information can also be passed anonymously to independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.