Stephen Lewis reports on a new, hard-hitting campaign with posters such as this to keep children safe and away from railway lines during the Easter holidays.

The words are simple: but they carry with them a world of grief and loss. "I don't know what possessed him to go on the track," says the mother of one 12-year-old boy killed after being hit by a train.

"When they came to tell us, I couldn't even say goodbye properly. We had to identify him by one of his trainers and a schoolbag with his name on it.

"I just pray no other parent has to go through what we've been through."

Sadly, that's a prayer likely to go unanswered.

The statistics are stark. Last year 122 people, many of them children, were killed after straying onto railway lines in the UK. A further 149 suffered serious injuries, including loss of limbs and severe burns.

In the York and North Yorkshire area alone, there were 74 reported cases last year where children and adults had been found trespassing on railway lines. Thankfully, none of them were killed or injured. But that's not always the case.

In 1992, a 14-year-old York boy was lucky to live after falling onto the electrified East Coast main line near Moor Lane Bridge, Dringhouses.

The teenager, who had been trying to walk across a water pipe which ran beside the bridge, lost his footing in the rain and fell. He hit a 25,000 volt overhead cable and landed inches from tracks as a train sped by, but somehow survived.

Others were not so lucky. Two years later, a nine-year-old boy was killed when a passenger train heading for Sheffield struck him on a railway line near Goole.

A year later a 12-year-old schoolboy was killed as he and a friend walked along a railway line, also near Goole.

The number of near misses in the York area only adds to worries.

Children as young as eight have been spotted playing 'chicken' with express trains in Dringhouses - standing on the rails and leaping clear at the last minute - and back in 1995 three boys were arrested after laying a sleeper across tracks near Holgate Bridge.

Horrified transport police called to investigate after reports of children seen 'messing around' in the area said if the sleeper hadn't been found it could have meant disaster and a derailed rain.

The fact is, says Mark Barnett, headteacher of York's Westfield Junior School and chairman of York Safer Schools, children are 'naturally drawn' to dangerous areas and activities.

"Unfortunately they think they're hurt-proof," he said. "Children think that it cannot happen to them, and don't realise the full danger until it's too late."

The problem is trains travel at deadly speed, require long distances to stop - and can't swerve to avoid somebody on the line.

"It's not like a car on a motorway," said York-based Acting Sgt Tracy Metcalf of the British Transport Police. "Trains can be travelling at over a 100mph.

"They can't slow down quickly, and while a car on a motorway can swerve, a train can't get out of the way of a person on the line."

It's not only children that trespass on railway lines. Adults take some foolhardy risks, too, in the interests of finding a short cut.

But with the Easter holidays about to begin, it's mainly children and parents who are the targets of a big new campaign by Railtrack and the British Transport Police to raise awareness about the dangers.

The problems of youngsters messing about on the track are always worse in school holidays - and in spring and summer when longer evenings mean children are more likely to go out to play.

The Track Off campaign, launched today, features giant posters and hard-hitting videos aimed at youngsters aged between five and 14.

In the Yorkshire region there will also be an 'eye-in-the-sky' helicopter patrolling twice a day to spot trespassers.

The chopper will be shadowed by transport police ground crews.

Other on-going initiatives, such as school visits and information packs, will continue.

Railtrack research reveals that those most at risk on our railway lines are boys aged between eight and 14. There have been warnings in the past - plenty of them.

But transport police, who have seen their fair share of horrors, hope this time the message will finally hit home.

One constable recalled a case in which he had been to the scene of an accident where a little girl had been killed on a track.

"I found her shoe, complete with sock, nearly half a mile down the track," he said.

"I just knelt there and cried. She had the same size shoe as my daughter."