Youngsters in Broughty Ferry are gambling with their lives by venturing on to the railway and climbing on the barriers at the level crossing, where trains regularly pass at up to 70 mph.

The Broughty Ferry line has been the subject of vandalism in recent months and British Transport Police have been going into schools in the area to highlight the potential dangers.

In the most serious incident, vandals started a fire at the station in November, the catalyst for a chain of events culminating in a near disaster when a train thundered through with the gates open to road traffic.

The approaching train had been signalled to stop because of a small fire on the platform, and the fire brigade asked for all services on the line to be halted as a safety precaution.

By activating the stop signal for trains, however, the level crossing gates were opened, which allowed any vehicles or pedestrians on Gray Street to cross.

In March, vandals risked hundreds of lives by dropping a concrete breezeblock on a train as it sped through the Fort Street bridge in Broughty Ferry.

“From experience, the barriers are continually subject to abuse,” said a spokesman for Network Rail. “It’s hard to single out one group, but it’s certainly youths in the immediate area.

“The British Transport Police are well aware of that.

“What we would ask at this juncture is that anybody witnessing this immediately comes forward and helps us, because, one of the best ways to prevent these things is through identification and punishments of the individuals involved.

“Rail crime has very real consequences for rail passengers and train crews. We must have tougher penalties which reflect the serious nature of these criminal acts.”

If the incident on November 5 had happened earlier in the day, when vehicles or pedestrians were around, the consequences could have been horrendous.

“The sequence of events was started off by a fire in a salt bin in the railway station on Guy Fawkes Night,” said a spokesman for Network Rail.

“That was investigated by BTP who were unable to find who was responsible.

“On that note there have been calls for CCTV within the station itself, but that’s not in effect a matter for Network Rail, that’s a ScotRail matter. There is a CCTV control room at Dunfermline which has the capabilities to take on more CCTVs at stations, so there is a programme, but it depends on the pecking order.”

A spokesman for ScotRail said the placement of CCTV cameras was decided by the Executive.

The Perth and Dundee areas are leading the country in Network Rail’s efforts to cut trespass and vandalism on the track. Perth, with a decrease of 60% in the number of incidents during last year’s campaign, led the way and Dundee, with a 50% decrease, was second, against a national average of a 17% decrease in crime on the track.

British Transport Police focus on known problem areas during the Back Track campaign in a bid to cut the 100,000 minutes in delays to trains offending causes annually.

Thirteen people died while using level crossings and five children under 16 died while trespassing in 2002-03, two more than in 2001-02. But the number of train collisions, broken rails, track buckles, vandalism and serious signal incidents fell.