ELEVEN men have been charged with conspiracy to steal railway signal cables from the Cotswold Line between Oxford and Worcester.

Network Rail said last month that nearly 70 per cent of the cable theft incidents in its western region happened on the route.

Incidents over the past year have cost the rail industry more than £300,000 and caused nearly 9,000 minutes of delays to trains between London, Oxford and Worcester.

Officers from British Transport Police raided five homes in Handsworth and Smethwick, in Birmingham, on Thursday and arrested seven men as part of an operation to solve a series of cable thefts in the Evesham, Honeybourne and Moreton-in-Marsh areas in the past six months.

Seven men, all from Romania, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to steal railway cable.

The previous day, four other Romanian men were detained after a vehicle was stopped by Warwickshire Police officers near a railway line at Church Lawford, near Coventry.

All 11 men appeared at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on Friday and were charged with conspiracy to steal railway cables. They were remanded in custody to appear at Birmingham Crown Court on Friday.

The men are Stefanel Ruset, 19, of Kentish Road, Handsworth; Chris Toader, 24, of Selsey Road, Edgbaston; and Alexandru Tofaleanu, 29; Mihai Mihart, 25; Jan Trofin, 36; Florin Cojocararu, 25; and Mihai Binta, 27, all of Parkhill Road, Smethwick. Also charged are Costinel Mijloc, 29; Gabriel Mijloc, 29; Adrian Nae, 25; Adrian Volnescu, 29, all of Highfield Road, Smethwick.

Trofin, Mihart, Cojocararu and Binta were arrested in Warwickshire and the others in Birmingham.