A HARD-HITTING campaign to show the dangers of playing on the railway has been launched by Network Rail.

With school summer holidays approaching, young people and adults alike are being warned that playing or taking short cuts across the tracks can lead to fines, imprisonment, injury or death.

Spearheading the Keep Off The Tracks And Stay Alive campaign will be a short film about the tragic death of a 15-year-old boy on a railway line last year, as seen through the eyes of his classmates.

A number of initiatives are being launched in and around railway crime hotspots to coincide with National Railway Crime Week between June 21 and 27, including an increased presence of Network Rail and British Transport Police patrols in the York, Selby and Harrogate areas. Network Rail's acting route director Graham Botham, said: "We must make young people sit up and take notice of the dangers and foolishness of using the railway as a playground. The consequences can be harsh, from being frog-marched home by the police to face angry parents, to hefty fines, imprisonment and possible even serious injury and death."

Network Rail claims crime on the railway costs £260 million each year. Ninety per cent of it is committed by young people aged between eight and 16, and there is a crime on the railways every 90 seconds in peak periods.

Sixty people died while trespassing on the railway last year - not including suicides - and six children died while playing on, or taking short cuts across the tracks. Mr Botham said: "As an industry we will continue to address crime on the network but cannot do it alone.

"This is not a railway problem but one shared with the wider community, for the crimes we see on the railway are often just the same as those being experienced on the other side of the boundary fence, although the consequences can be so much more tragic.

"The school summer break is peak crime-time for the railways and we ask all schools and parents to use this National Railway Crime Week to hammer home the message to their young people - keep off the tracks and stay alive."

Updated: 09:57 Monday, June 21, 2004