I hadn't heard about this until I read your post, Maisie, so I Googled it. (For anyone interested, the story is here:
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/fundraising-page-set-up-after-2820266 ).
Disgraceful! But, somehow, not surprising in the sick society in which so many people seem to flourish. It's soul destroying for everyone involved with the Great Central Railway - indeed, for anyone connected with transport preservation because we all know it could all too easily have been our project that was targeted (and, next week or next month, it may well be).
Ruddington is a great site, offering plenty of space for the railway, the transport museum, for rallies and galas but it does suffer from being very secluded, even though in terms of distance, it isn't far from homes and an industrial estate. The site is almost entirely screened by trees so, once the country park visitors and the transport volunteers have all gone home, there's little chance of thieves and vandals being spotted.
The Great Central volunteers absolutely did not deserve this. Over the years, we've watched the railway grow and expand ever southward and been so impressed with what has been achieved through sheer, hard graft. Not only do I want the culprits caught, I want them and their parents/guardians made to pay every penny of the cost of repairs and replacement/reconstruction. I don't care if it takes them 40 years and they have to sell their houses - if parents were made to face the consequences of their vile offsprings' actions, I feel sure many of them would pay a lot more attention to where they were and what they were doing.
Sorry if this is getting too heavy but ... we do have to ask how society has got into a condition where anybody, even the stupidest teen, gets amusement and gratification from smashing up railway carriages and destroying the fruits of other's labour. It's just all wrong and I don't know how to start making it right again.