From
the BBC» Police have issued a warning to beach visitors in Fife, after a series of incidents where people have trespassed on a railway line to escape rising tides.
British Transport Police (BTP▸ ) said people were stranded on Burntisland beach 19 times in the last year.
The East Coast Main Line runs along an embankment directly behind the beach.
BTP Inspector Bryan O'Neill said: "As the school holidays approach, we're expecting to see more incidents."
BTP, Network Rail, HM Coastguard and the RNLI have urged visitors to check tide times before going out on the beach.
Inspector O'Neill added: "There have been incidents of trespass on the East Coast Main line where people go for a walk on the shore, end up trapped by the tide and try to escape by climbing up the embankment then onto the railway.
OK - people SHOULD not get into that position - but if they do, I can understand the dilemma and choice. Of course, if Network Rail were to provide a pedestrian crossing ...
If that report is correct in referring to Burntisland Beach, then there is a promenade behind it and two tunnels under the railway. But I think it is the later quote, which talks about walking on "the shore", that is more likely to be right. There are rockier sandless bits of shoreline further from Burntisland, with the embankment and then railway behind. I guess people think it's easier to walk along the railway that the top of the embankment - though they could be wrong about that. A large part of that stretch of railway offers no easy way off the far side, as it is on tops of a big wall facing the Kinghorn Road.
