Steam trains vandalised

Vandals have damaged Feilding’s popular steam trains by breaking into a yard where the locomotives are kept and spraying fire extinguishers through them.

Feilding and District Steam Rail Society chairman Rod Bertram said thousands of dollars of damage had been done.

The society relies heavily on volunteers and maintains heritage railway equipment and runs excursions.

‘‘We have all our wonderful volunteers who spend a lot of time preparing these things to go out on the line,’’ Bertram said.

‘‘That’s the thing that hurts – we get so many people down here helping, then we get senseless yobbos like that.’’

Bertram said the damage was discovered on Saturday, which meant it happened some time on Friday night.

He said vandals got into four carriages after breaking into the site through a barbed-wire fence.

There was a steam locomotive parked in the yard and Bertram said the vandals got the fire extinguisher out of it and sprayed it around. They then went to another locomotive, where they found more fire extinguishers, and emptied them all through the carriages of the train.

‘‘It’s right through all four carriages. We need to get commercial cleaners in and it will cost us.’’

The society was required by law to carry the extinguishers in all its locomotives.

‘‘There’s six to eight that are emptied.’’

Two-way radios were also stolen and a radio was pulled out of one of the locomotives.

The society has an event coming up in November, and Bertram said work would need to be completed before that could go ahead.

Police are making inquiries.

‘‘We get so many people . . . helping, then we get senseless yobbos like that.’’ Rod Bertram, Feilding and District Steam Rail Society