A THIEF who broke into a Victorian waterworks searching for valuable metal took a miniature steam engine, a court was told.

Former heroin addict Christopher Corrie first tried to steal a copper lightning conductor from the side of Tees Cottage Pumping Station, in Darlington, to sell for scrap.

Then the 32-year-old entered an outbuilding, where he found a miniature steam engine belonging to Cleveland Association of Model Engineers, used to pull trains for visitors on open days.

Ciaran Grogan, prosecuting, told Darlington magistrates: "He had a look around the premises, entered the building, saw the model train and decided to steal it."

He said the train, which was sold for scrap, had been in a compound behind the main building housing the beam engine, in Coniscliffe Road.

Corrie, of Hargreave Terrace, Darlington, whose previous record includes 32 thefts, all from commercial premises, admitted burglary.

He also asked for two other incidents, including theft of the copper cable, to be taken into consideration. The train has never been recovered.

Laura Saunders-Jerrom, in mitigation, said Corrie, whose last offence was in 2005, had been working on building sites for two-and-a-half years, but had lost his job because of the current financial downturn.

She said: "He was very short of money.

He did not go in with the purpose. It was opportunistic."

She said Corrie had had a previous heroin addiction and lived for a time in hostels, but had turned his life around and had been clean from heroin for three years. Magistrates gave Corrie a two-year conditional discharge and ordered him to pay £2,000 in compensation.

The pumping station, which began supplying piped water from the River Tees to residents of Darlington and Teesside in 1849, is maintained entirely by volunteers, who open the site to the public several times a year.

George Beautyman, of the Tees Cottage Pumping Station Society, last night told The Northern Echo: "When you are working on a preservation site, you are trying to build up a museum to show off the town.

"The site is unique. When you think of the manpower put in getting this built up, the last thing you want is someone knocking it down again.

"It is soul destroying when this is sold for scrap. I am angry and sad. Angry because it happened and sad because people like this exist."