A SCRAP dealer has been warned he faces a prison sentence for his part in the theft of £1.5m worth of train parts and cabling.

Brian Brady, 52, yesterday admitted weighing in the expensive metal at a North-East yard over a ten-month period last year.

He entered 11th hour guilty pleas as he was due to face a crown court trial on charges of handling stolen goods and money laundering.

Brady will be sentenced next month once background reports have been prepared on him by officials from the Probation Service.

The judge, Recorder Simon Hickey, warned him: "You may well receive a custodial sentence at the end of this case."

Brady, of Bedford Street, Stockton, had denied the three charges when he first appeared at Teesside Crown Court in early April.

He was due to go on trial yesterday, but finally admitted the two counts of handling stolen goods between January and October.

Prosecutors will offer no evidence on the charge of converting criminal property when Brady returns to be sentenced on July 6.

He was given bail until his next appearance, with conditions that he does not enter any scrap yard in the UK or weigh in any metal.

Mr Recorder Hickey told him: "You must be under no illusions, these are serious offences and you may well receive a custodial sentence."

Prosecutors say Brady visited the scrap yard site in Middlesbrough about 60 times and made more than £50,000 from his sales.

The parts - including radiator elements, electrics, cables and metal piping - were stolen from a rail depot in Thornaby, near Stockton.

At the earlier hearing, the court heard that six trains were in storage at a DB Schenker depot after being replaced by new rolling stock.

Rather than being scrapped, the locos were to be sold to other rail firms, and the company would have expected to make £1.5m.

Cleveland Police raided Brady's premises last October and found parts of a Class 56 loco. More were recovered ten days later.

At the earlier hearing, defence lawyer Charlotte Atherton said Brady did not know they were stolen because the did not look new.

She told the court: "The defendant says the goods came into his possession in the normal course of his dealings as a scrap dealer."