Alan Rogers posted:
Lenny the Lion posted:That cartoon is not far from the truth. That's something I'd do......short of stealing.
I have seen so many cases where people have indeed stolen stuff, it's not even funny. I was at a show in Maryland many years ago where a vendor had a stack of signs for a local light rail, all brand new. Someone was looking them over and said he worked for that rail operation and was surprised these were for sale as he'd seen them going up just a couple of weeks before. The table guy said, "Yeah, I saw a stack of them lying next to some poles, on the ground next to a grade crossing last month, so I saved them." This was before cell phones in every hand, otherwise the employee would have called the RR cops, I think. He was less than amused.
Any 1:1 scale train collector has heard mention of stealing some RR property, “so some thief doesn’t make off with it”. People like that really think there’s a difference somehow!
Reminds me of someone who I heard trolled collector and antique shows in the New England states in the 80s and 90s, would claim he was a RR cop and that he was ‘taking back stolen property,’ to include stuff from the steam era (because, he’d say, it’s still stolen even if it’s out of date) and would threaten people with jail if they didn’t hand stuff over. Nobody seemed to question that some vendors would often tell him to come back with a warrant (or pound sand) with no repercussions. He made the mistake of doing that to a vendor who was a REAL cop on the Northeast Corridor and things got ugly, instantly. I would have loved to have been there for that!
