MONDAY'S Evening Press showed a picture of a gang of lawbreakers trespassing on a railway line trying to stop a moving train ('Ambushed', March 7.

It is just as well the driver was able to avoid the death of an innocent horse, and possible damage to a valuable engine.

These are serious criminal offences, but the offenders were not the usual chav-youths, but the type whom I could imagine blustering angrily, and braying: "Lock 'em up" if the news showed such actions by others.

Yes, the hunters have showed their true colours again.

After last year's vandalism of road signs, and the shameful scenes of violence in London earlier this year, these thugs are no better than the lowest that our sink estates can produce.

Trespassing on the railway is punishable by prison, and I believe that current anti-terror legislation encompasses forcible stopping or interfering with a train.

Let's identify the culprits and pack them off to Belmarsh, then they will see what a privilege liberty really is.

Andy Scaife,

Suffolk House,

Lowther Terrace,

York.

Updated: 09:32 Friday, March 11, 2005