The Long Good Friday — coal train protest eventually evicted — final update

5am, Sat­ur­day 14th June 2008
Police con­firmed all pro­test­ers had been removed from the train, and arrests went “into dou­ble fig­ures”.

Twen­ty-nine cli­mate cam­paign­ers halt­ed a train tak­ing fuel to Drax pow­er sta­tion in North York­shire on Fri­day.

Those arrest­ed face pos­si­ble charges of con­spir­a­cy to obstruct trains, obstruct­ing trains and rail­way tres­pass, police said.

The train remains where it stopped, close to the vil­lage of Carl­ton, near Goole, ahead of an inspec­tion.

Up to 100 police offi­cers, some in riot gear, board­ed the wag­ons of the train in the oper­a­tion to remove the activists.

Supt Ter­ry Nichol­son of British Trans­port Police said: “It’s been a lengthy oper­a­tion but our pri­or­i­ty has been the safe­ty of the pub­lic and our offi­cers.

“We have been deal­ing with the pro­test­ers in a safe and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner and we have been arrest­ing peo­ple for obstruct­ing the rail­way.”

One of the par­ty of demon­stra­tors said they had chained them­selves to the train and would need to be cut free if police want­ed to remove them.

Speak­ing from the train, one of the pro­test­ers, called Natal­ie, said: “The police have moved into the hop­pers. They’ve start­ed tak­ing stuff. There must be about 10 of them on the train but loads more around it.”

Some of the pro­test­ers could be seen mov­ing on to the top of the steel arch of the bridge over the Riv­er Aire where the train is parked, a few miles from the vil­lage of Carl­ton.

The train was stopped in Raw­cliffe, on the bor­der of North and East York­shire, appar­ent­ly by a pro­test­er wav­ing a red flag.

The envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers used an iron gird­er bridge and climb­ing equip­ment to scale the 12ft high truck.

“This was a com­plex oper­a­tion as many of those arrest­ed had to be cut free hav­ing attached them­selves to rail vehi­cles and the over­bridge,” the BTP state­ment added.

The pro­test­ers had hoped to stay on the train for sev­er­al days and had with them food and water as well as a portable lava­to­ry.

See orig­i­nal sto­ry at http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20894

Video of start of evic­tion attempt

—

Update:
At 12pm on Fri­day evening the last three coal train block­aders where evict­ed from the bridge above the block­ad­ed train. The occu­pa­tion had last­ed 16 hours and occu­piers had shov­elled around 30 tons of coal onto the tracks. 20 peo­ple where cut out of arm tube lock­ons and 9 were tak­en of the bridge, 29 were arrest­ed and charged with con­spir­cy to com­mit Unlaw­ful and mali­cious obstruc­tion of trains. Every­one was out of the police cells and account­ed for by 10pm Sat­ur­day evening. Every­one is bailed to return… you guessed it on the 31st of July and 4th 5th and 6th of August. The fires at Drax are still burn­ing but the move­ment to stop coal is grow­ing fast.