Blood on the tracks

THE grainy video images of three young children playing on railway lines near Manchester earlier this summer sparked national horror. Not just because the children - the youngest was only six - were putting themselves in danger, but because what they were doing was so shocking.

The CCTV footage showed the three carrying pieces of wood and stone to the railway tracks and building a blockade across the lines. The consequences, had what they were doing led to a train being derailed, could have been horrendous. You only have to look at the Selby rail crash to realise that.

Truly horrifying, however, was that what those three children were doing was not particularly unusual.

Graham Hobson, a York-based British Transport police inspector of 28 years standing, has seen it all in his time. Railway sleepers laid across the lines, lumps of concrete dangled from bridges at just the height to smash through the drivers' window, stones and other objects thrown from bridges.

In one case at Wakefield, a youth dangled a piece of concrete with spikes in it from a bridge. The spikes smashed through the windscreen of a train and came within inches of the driver. "It was hanging exactly at the height where the driver sits, so it must have been measured," Graham says.

Another time a few years ago, when he was waiting at a local station on a Q-train - a 'dummy' train filled with police officers that was on the lookout for vandals - he saw a group of children piling steel and wooden poles on the line in such a way they would have been driven straight through the cab of an approaching train. The sight filled him with horror.

"I can understand that railways are an attraction to children and always have been," he says. "I can understand that kids go down to watch the trains go past. What I don't understand is children putting something so big on the line they want to bring the train off. I don't understand the mentality."

There seems, Graham says, to be a tendency to dismiss the crime of rail trespass and vandalism as 'trivial' - even, sometimes, among those who should know better, such as crown prosecutors. "Kids walking down railway lines when they should not be there, kids putting stones on tracks or throwing stones at trains, it has always been seen as boys' pranks," he says.

"But the truth is, if you're dangling something off a bridge at a height where it could hit a driver, you're putting that driver's life at risk. If you're putting something on the track that's big enough, it could bring that train off the track. In the worst case scenario, you're looking at loss of life."

So far, he's not aware of a train derailing or crashing as a result of such 'pranks'. But he believes it is only a matter of time.

What cannot be denied is the stark fact that many of the young 'pranksters' themselves end up losing their lives. We have all seen the images of young people with arms or legs missing or scarred and burnt almost beyond recognition after trespassing on the tracks.

In 2000/2001 alone, Graham says, 22 of the 60 people killed or injured on the nation's railway lines were under 16. It's a grim toll that has been going on year after year, he says. Children just don't realise how dangerous trains are.

With all his years of experience and with all the precautions he takes, Graham still feels worried when he is near the tracks. Youngsters playing there simply have no idea of the dangers they are in.

"They don't know how fast the train is coming, don't know that if they are on a bend the driver might not be able to see them; they don't know how long it takes a train to stop," he says.

"For a train doing 125mph, the stopping distance is one and a quarter miles. The driver isn't going to see one and a quarter miles up the track that there is a young lad playing there, and by the time he sees him, he cannot stop the train. All he can do is sound his horn and hope that young person gets off the track."

Increasingly high-profile and hard-hitting campaigns have been aimed at keeping children away from railway lines. Now, for the first time, Railtrack has started implementing a national strategy to crack down on what it has christened 'Route Crime': trespassing and vandalism on the railway lines.

This has been prompted by the toll of children killed and injured, and the estimated £250 million a year cost to the rail industry of damage caused by vandalism and other railway crime.

The British Transport Police have developed a similar strategy - and now, the two organisations are working together through the National Route Crime Group to co-ordinate their efforts.

Graham Robson is on a one-year secondment to Railtrack to oversee the implementation of the Partners Against Railway Crime initiative - a four-pronged strategy to reduce crime and vandalism on the railways.

The strategy involves engineering work to close off gaps in fencing, block access to railway lines and clear trackside debris such as concrete rubble and old sleepers that children often use as missiles or obstacles.

There are educational initiatives, working with schools, designed to warn youngsters of the dangers of playing near railway lines, and a website for children - www.trackoff.org - with its catchline "get a life, don't lose it".

Lines of communication are being improved to ensure everyone in the rail industry pulls together in the same direction. This has been accompanied by a major push for rail crime to be taken more seriously and for appropriate punishment to be given to those caught committing acts of vandalism.

Much good work has been done in the past in different areas of the country, concedes Graham. But this is the first time the efforts of all involved have been focused on a single strategy. With railway crime showing a steady increase over the last few years, it has not come before time.

The tragedy of young people killed and maimed on railways every year is bad enough. There may not have been a case yet where a train was derailed by objects deliberately left on the line by young pranksters.

"But the figures for rail crime were showing a steady increase, and my fear is that if we were to continue down the line that we were travelling, we would have a major accident one day," Graham says.

"We have to stop that happening."

Updated: 10:22 Wednesday, September 04, 2002