4-ton railway bridge stolen

A four-tonne railway bridge has been stolen in the Czech Republic:

The bridge was on a disused stretch of line just outside Cheb.
Martina Hruskova, a spokeswoman for the Czech police, commented to AFP: 'We are not sure if it was taken for personal use or for its scrap value.' Exactly what that 'personal use' might be was left unsaid.

Link (via Warren Ellis)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Funny • Happy Mutants

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

mrfitz

the Russians built it and they are taking it back
David Carroll

I don’t want to point any fingers but is there an engineering school nearby? Have they looked in the deans office?

A four ton bridge can’t be very big.
RyanH

Happy Mutants? I begin to think that tag is being overused. What happy mutants are present in this story? It seems like every story that is slightly unusual acquires this tag. Kind of devalues it.
windybt

this happened in Ecuador back in the early 1900s a lot too.
Andrew

I guess the happy mutants tag is because it’s in the Czech Republic.

Anyway, it was probably scrapped by gypsies. There are lots of gypsies in that area of Europe, and it’s pretty common for them to steal metal to sell as scrap. When I was in Bulgaria last Spring I heard lots of stories about it, including a war memorial that had been stripped in about two days after being erected, and many people died when they used to have regular blackouts because they would try to steal the copper wiring when the power came on, and were electrocuted when it came back on.
egp

Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego???
Xenu

If you believe this story, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

No really. A 4-ton railway bridge, to be exact.
Slippy Lane

They’ll be back for the tracks when the fuss dies down.
agrajag

#7: Isn’t ‘Gypsy’ a non-PC term nowadays? I thought you were supposed to call them Roma people or something. Still thieving bastards whatever you call ‘em. :)
gobi desert

I’m guessing ‘thieving bastards’ is not PC either.
If there is an engineering school nearby, perhaps they will find the bridge attached to a VW Beatle. Accomplished no doubt in the dark of night by some enterprising engineer students.
dculberson

It didn’t even process at first .. what kind of bridge weighs four tons? (Or tonnes, or tuhns, or however you want to spell it.) It must have been a very small bridge. Crossing a pothole.
C White

awesome
Simon Greenwood

I’m sure something like that happened in the UK a few years ago: a disused railway bridge over a road was removed overnight and made the news. However it then transpired that the work had been carried out by National Rail who had just forgotten to tell anyone. I can’t find the story now though, so maybe I just dreamt it.
bentheo

Reminds me of Terry Pratchett books where Fred Colon would stand on the bridge all night instead of patrolling to make sure no one would steal it.