The number of cable thefts on Britains railways has increased this year, probably caused by the current high scrap values of various metals, with more thefts in the first six months than in the whole of last year.

Network Rail has revealed there were 443 thefts of signalling cable across Britain in the first six months of 2010, compared with 558 in the whole of 2009 – and almost half of this year’s incidents happened on the East Coast route.