{"id":724577,"date":"2026-08-02T15:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724577\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T15:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:27:15","slug":"vandals-target-churnet-valley-railway-by-destroying-jcb-digger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724577\/","title":{"rendered":"Vandals target Churnet Valley Railway by destroying JCB digger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A volunteer-led heritage railway has said it has suffered a spate of vandalism, which has seen one of its mini JCB diggers left completely destroyed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Staffordshire&#8217;s Churnet Valley Railway (CVR) said the vehicle had been awaiting collection from its maintenance team and had only been on its land for 24 hours. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But that was enough time for at least one vandal to leave the digger unusable. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Controls have been ripped off, electrical components torn out, the dipstick removed and, unbelievably, dirt and grit poured into the engine sump,&#8221; a CVR spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This wasn&#8217;t an abandoned machine. It wasn&#8217;t causing anyone any harm. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was simply waiting to be collected after helping our volunteers maintain the railway.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That was not all as a newly fitted fence at the site of the future Leek Station was also found in bits. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Rather than being damaged accidentally, the fence has been carefully unscrewed, paling by paling, with the screws removed as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A volunteer-led heritage railway has said it has suffered a spate of vandalism, which has seen one of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-724577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}