Rail cable theft
Copper signalling cable is stripped from lineside troughing at night, causing hundreds of delayed trains and six-figure repair bills for a few pounds of scrap; the lineside is long, unlit and unpowered.
No alert — lineside quiet, troughing intact.
Nothing wakes. Only the nanopower domain and the PIR are drawing.
Cameras spaced along the cess trigger on movement at any hour. Foxes and other animals are cleared locally; people are escalated, and Gen AI separates hi-vis maintenance crews carrying out inspection from figures in dark clothing at opened troughing with cutters, alerting on theft and cueing neighbouring cameras.
- Wake
- PIR wakes the camera; radar confirms distance and size before any capture
- Schedule
- No timed captures. Heartbeat every 24 hours. IR at night.
- On the camera
- Radar drops foxes and other animals. Edge AI drops frames with no person on the lineside.
- Your criterion
Is anyone on the lineside? Are they a maintenance crew in hi-vis, or people in dark clothing at the cable troughing?
Written in plain English. The model reads every escalated frame against it.- Alert rule
ai.person_at_troughing AND NOT ai.hi_vis · no hold-off · cue neighbouring cameras- Who is told
- Webhook to the route control room; push to the BTP response team.
- Evidence kept
- Escalated frames kept with the camera's mileage reference.
MachairanowTwo figures in dark clothing, no hi-vis, crouched at opened troughing hauling out copper cable. Bolt cutters and a torch on the ground.
A readable account of what triggered it, with the frame attached. No feed to watch, no captures to trawl through.
Cable theft on the rise: £500m a year, 400 trains delayed daily; one theft delayed 100 trains for £50 of copper (August 2026)