Lack of progress delays trains.

There has been much controversy in the media recently about scrap metal and cable thefts, arising from the increasing costs of various metals. Locally this caused problems for the railway, which couldn't run trains because the electric cables had been cut and stolen.
At first this confused me, and I thought it must be another typical railway excuse - we can't run the trains as we've no electricity - but of course the trains run on diesel, although the drivers run on tea, which can be made from water heated from electricity or gas, or at a pinch, diesel.
But it was obviously signal cabling that had been stolen. Repairs would take hours as engineers struggled to replace the cable. And they have to use Health & Safety, which means it takes about 20 men with cranes, testing equipment, scaffolding etc etc instead of two men with a flat bed transit doing it in fifteen minutes, like when the travellers borrow the cable.
But hold on, lets think this through. Why replace the cable only to risk it being stolen again? If you must replace it use fibre optic, which, so far as I can work out, is worthless second hand. But why replace it at all? Why are we using a system developed by Victorians with big cast iron levers to operate flashing lights, bells and whistles, and men waving flags, when we have digital technology at our disposal? Move with the times fellas. Put a tracker on each engine, with a transponder that tells a central computer how many carriages it has and exactly where it is, use wifi to control signals and barriers, and have digitally encrypted radios so that staff can talk to each other to tell each other about the latest crashes and faults. Not that you would need any staff, as the trains could then drive themselves.