RAILWAY safety officers are to revisit an estate where children have been caught on security cameras trying to trespass on the track.

Community leaders in Firthmoor, Darlington, say they are terrified another tragedy will occur, following the deaths of Stuart Adams and Lee Mullis on the East Coast Main Line elsewhere in the town on Good Friday.

Last year, Darlington Borough Council's closed-circuit television cameras filmed children trying to dig holes under a fence separating them from the railway line in Edgemoor Road.

And yesterday, a community safety meeting on the estate heard that youngsters got past the railway fence in Pateley Moor Crescent to retrieve footballs.

Resident Bill Cook said: "I don't think it's so much that they want to be on the railway line.

"It's a football pitch there, and they go to get the ball.

"I think the actual fencing needs to be revised, because it is easily taken apart."

Meeting chairman Councillor Lee Vasey, who has previously called for better education in schools on track safety, said: "We do have the railway line at the extremes of the estate and we are quite well aware that young people in the past have managed to get on the track.

"We are particularly saddened by the fact that young boys have lost their lives.

"I think a message has gone home to a lot of young people about how dangerous the railway line is.

"We would rather not have had the message going round this way."

Beat officer PC Chris Horner said he planned to visit the estate's primary schools to warn pupils about the dangers of going on the railway track.

"I'll go and visit the schools and put it across again that you go on the railway line and you lose your life."

Phil Bustard, Network Rail's public affairs manager, told the meeting officers would inspect the fencing at the danger spots.

"We'll be very happy to come out and have a look at this," he said, adding that a Network Rail representative would join PC Horner on his school visits.