SCHOOLS in Swindon are being sent a hard-hitting video about a 15-year-old boy who was killed playing on railway tracks in a bid to crack down on trespassing and vandalism.

Swindon is a hotspot for rail crime, with 22 reported incidents of vandalism and 23 incidents of trespass in 2003.

The short film about the death of Leicester teenager Tyler Deacon will form the spearhead of the campaign during National Railway Crime Week, which started on Monday.

His death last December prompted schoolmates to tell their story in the hope other teenagers would heed the warning and stay away.

Network Rail wants to reinforce the message as schools are about to start summer holidays.

It says young people aged between eight and 16 commit 90 per cent of railway crime.

Nancy Garcia, Network Rail's Route Crime manager, said: "As an industry we will continue to address crime on the network but we cannot do this alone.

"This is not a railway problem but one shared with the wider community.

"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."

Swindon is one of the persistently highest ranked hotspots in the past five years in the region. Others include Gloucester, Weston-Super-Mare and Chelten-ham.

About 60 people died, including six children, while trespassing on the railway network last year, not including suicides.

Crime on the railway costs about £260 million each year. The figure includes damage to stock and infrastructure and cost of delays, as well as lost working time.

But figures released this month by the Rail Safety and Standards Board show there was a 29 per cent reduction in all types of train accidents caused by vandalism.

This is a reduction for the third successive year of this type of crime, which includes missiles striking trains and arson on board trains.

Bhavani Vadde