Police probe internet sale of railway heritage (From The Northern Echo)
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Police probe internet sale of railway heritage
10:41am Thursday 30th September 2010 in News
GENUINE, OR FAKE? The eBay site offering the railway sleepers
HERITAGE groups are trying to establish whether stone railway sleepers on an internet auction site, purportedly from the world’s first passenger railway, are genuine.
A man has been cautioned for trying to sell what he claimed were sleepers from the Stockton and Darlington Railway on eBay.
The Northern Echo has been thanked for reporting the sale of the sleepers which, if genuine, are irreplaceable.
Two separate sellers were auctioning what they claimed were sleepers on the website.
One of them, based in Stockton, said the sleepers were excavated during the recent construction of the new Darlington ring road.
The original trackbed of the Stockton and Darlington railway had been unearthed during construction of the Eastern Transport Corridor, in the town.
However, the sleepers were supposedly covered by three metres of soil and their positions recorded for posterity.
A few were put aside for use in displays and interpretation.
When The Northern Echo spotted the sleepers being advertised for £30 on eBay, it alerted Darlington Borough Council which, in turn, informed the police.
The auction site led to another which showed photographs of the sleepers.
When questioned by police, the seller admitted trying to sell items fraudulently and accepted a caution.
The first seller told officers he had bought the sleepers in good faith from someone who claimed they were genuine.
He did not have the contact details for the man and police have been unable to establish if the sale was legitimate.
A spokeswoman for Darlington Borough Council said: “We will work with Durham Archaeology to establish if they are genuine sleepers or not and, if they are, find out which area of original rail track they were removed from.
“However, we are confident the only sleepers removed from site during construction of the Eastern Transport Corridor were those identified for preservation in the Head of Steam museum – all other sleepers were buried in their existing terrain.
“As a local authority, whenever we are alerted to potential crime or damage to our heritage we will pursue it vigorously and we’d like to thank The Northern Echo for working with us to make sure this investigation could be conducted and successfully resolved.”
A spokeswoman for Durham Police said: “This series of events highlights the potential for fraudulent sales online and the need for buyers to beware of the perils of buying online.”
The Northern Echo tried to contact the original seller, but he was unavailable for contact.
Comments(3)
*shakes head slowly*
says...
3:21pm Fri 1 Oct 10
There was a rumbling about knocking down the old railway buildings to build the roundabout - and they were from 1970! Hardly English Heritage stuff!
Assurance
says...
7:15pm Fri 1 Oct 10
don't get me wrong shakey,
I am not advocating that we need any more 1825 stone sleepers.
We have enough of them in the Town Hall!
I was just making the point that the council had it's chance to gather them up a long time ago, so why are they whinging now that some enterprizing person has tried to sell them on Ebay?
Assurance says...
7:20pm Thu 30 Sep 10
Anyone with a suitable quadbike and some help could go along the old S&DR trackbed west of Darlington and search for and find at least two original stone sleepers. I saw them and photographed them lying there in 2004. There was no signage along there informing the public that it is a protected heritage site.
Darlington Borough Council have had 185 years to decide what to do with the trackbed and it's associated artifacts after the Locomotion No.1 returned from it's last trip to Stockton.
With hardly a blink of concern for the S&DR trackbed they had Birse bulldoze it out of existence, and laid an unwanted road and two massively oversized, expensive, and obstructive roundabouts upon it.
Then they tell us that if you want to see the stone sleepers you will have to dig a 3 metre deep hole in the DECT, because that is where they buried the the ones they found.
Many places with lesser claim to rail heritage than Darlington have revived their nostalgic railways as tourist attractions, but what has Darlington got, a run down station, tucked out of the way, and largely unseen by the thousands that 'cross' the old S&DR every day they go along Darlington's A66 bypass.