Westmoreland Heritage Trail stop signs stolen from Monroeville trailhead
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As president of the Westmoreland Heritage Trail, Stan Rudge usually has plenty of things on his plate.
Dealing with the theft of two stop signs at the Monroeville trailhead has not been one of them. Until now.
“It looks like someone literally cut the post right at the top of the sign,” said Rudge, who was alerted April 7 to the missing signs at the Saunders Station trailhead.
“I couldn’t believe it when someone called to say they were missing.”
Rudge is ordering replacements from Mastro Signs and Painting in Trafford.
‘They’re a little bit smaller than normal stop signs,” he said. “We put those up when the trail was first built.”
Unfortunately, it’s not the first instance of vandalism at the Saunders Station trailhead.
“We were doing a safety and courtesy initiative along the trail, and in August 2021, we put up a bike rack and a couple of wrecked bikes to illustrate what could happen if you don’t observe the stop signs,” Rudge said. “Sure enough, someone stole the rack and the bikes.”
Rudge filed a police report when the bikes and rack were stolen, and he plans to file a second report about the stolen stop signs. There are no nearby cameras in the area that would have captured the theft, he said.
“It’s frustrating because we’re all volunteers, we do all of these things for the trail, and then we end up putting money back into it over things like this,” he said.
Bridge completed
In a bit of more positive news, work crews finished a resurfacing project on the Trafford Road bridge, which carries the trail over a small Murrysville creek, in late March.
“We put it down in 2015, and it’s all made out of treated lumber but the deck started to go bad,” said former Westmoreland Parks director Malcolm Sias, who is also a trail board member. The new decking has been painted with preservative to help it last longer.
SUCCESS….Work is completed on the resurfacing of the Trafford Rd. Bridge in Murrysville and the trail is now fully open once again. Here's a look at the week-long effort. Great dedication by our trail volunteers! pic.twitter.com/g262Cc1b2i
— WestmorelandHeritageTrail (@TrailHeritage) March 29, 2022