Train Robbers.

[Clutch Cargo]

While browsing the Web I came across this Tid-bit from Reuters.
(retirement sucks fellows)

Cold and desperate, Polish jobless rob coal trains
Tue Jan 10, 2006 8:20 AM ET8
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By Janusz Chmielewski

RUDA SLASKA, Poland (Reuters) - As the train rumbles north, the security guards on board finger their guns nervously, peering through the snow for any sign of bandits eager to steal their precious cargo -- coal.

Police say organized gangs and freelance scavengers, drawn from Poland's army of unemployed, risk death or dismemberment to steal coal from trains as they cross southern Silesia, the country's industrial heartland.

Some 200,000 coal miners have lost their jobs in a series of pit closures since the 1990s, leaving many former workers struggling to get by in this region near the Czech border where unemployment in some areas stands around 30 percent.

State railway PKP says it loses more than 10 million zlotys ($3.2 million) a year in theft of coal and the resulting damage to equipment.

"(Coal thieves) have been run over by trains, and buried under piles of coal or coal dust spilling out of rail cars," says Silesia's police spokesman Andrzej Gaska.

Some thieves build obstacles to force trains to stop, and many are willing to fight the railway guards who carry weapons and who try to stop them. The gangs sell the coal for cash, while scavengers are looking for ways to heat their homes.

There are no reliable figures for the numbers of people involved in the illegal practice or for alleged injuries caused.

"This is a pathological region -- it's former miners who've lost their jobs. They don't have anything to live on, and the tracks are the closest source of income," said one railway police officer, watching a train roll past.

"I've seen a brick come through a window just millimeters from a guard's head. Another time when they stopped a train, one of our guys got hit in the face with a shovel," said the officer, who declined to be identified.

FORMER HEROES

Before Poland's communist authorities were ousted in 1989, Poland's miners were feted by the government as heroes of the working class for their role in keeping the country's flagship steel mills and other heavy industry running.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.


Kurt

[waltersrails]

Thats sad