"Thieves are pilfering railroad cars in a crime that harks back to the days of horseback-riding bandits..."

"... but is fueled by a host of modern realities, including the rise of e-commerce and Southern California’s role as a hub for the movement of goods.... [Adrian Guerrero, a director of public affairs for Union Pacific] estimates that about 90 cargo containers a day are compromised, sometimes by an organized group that has halted trains and recruited people living on the street to ransack the containers.... Along the tracks Saturday, a couple who said they showed up after seeing an Instagram post scanned the crush of abandoned cartons looking for something valuable. An Xbox package had caught their eye. Another man who had been waiting for a bus stopped to rummage through the debris. He found some car speakers he figured he could sell for $200 to make up for the hours he missed at work that day...."

The L.A. Times reports.