Advertisement

Train Heists Are BACK! Chicago Trains Got Looted In Austin Yesterday Afternoon

Call me old fashioned, but I love a good train heist. There's something romantic about it. The nostalgia. The names. Jesse James. Billy The Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Those names are woven into the fabric and folklore of the American West. I am sure they still happen and I just wasn't aware of them. This is the first time I've seen a train heist so brazen in broad daylight. Something is cooler about getting it off a train instead of smashing a window and taking it from Target or Wal-Mart.

Now, of course, the big difference here is that law enforcement chased those historical outlaws until the end of time. They chased Butch Cassidy and Sundance all the way down to Bolivia and shot them dead. Stakes for train heists these days aren't nearly as high since, ya know, it's basically legal to commit theft in many places. You can take as many flat screen tvs as you want and nobody will do a thing. You can casually stroll back to your car with a 70" TV over your head. You can make your house look like a Buffalo Wild Wings. TVs everywhere and it's cool. Technically in Chicago you can only steal up to $300 without real penalty as opposed to San Francisco where you can steal up to $950 worth of goods. 

Train heists have to be like a big Easter Egg hunt at this point. You don't know what's in a freight car until you crack it open. Not like doing a smash and grab downtown at a CVS or a designer store. One day you might get flat screens and cookware, the next day it could be pallets of aluminum cans or garbage bags. You never know. Has to be exhilarating to crack open that mystery prize pack.