TRAINS carrying deadly nuclear waste are being driven over a ramshackle and poorly maintained railway line in Cumbria to re-processing plant Sellafield, activists warned yesterday.

Residents who live near the railway say the track has a history of accidents — including landslips onto the line.

Marianne Birkby, member of campaign group Radiation Free Lakeland, said: “Residents of Braystones have for some years been trying to get some remedy for the awful state of the railway crossing and line. Not all of them are anti-nuclear but all are worried.

“I can vouch for the Heath Robinson nature of the crossing at Braystones.

“Last time I was there a chap shouted across to me to ring the telephone and see if he could cross with his car as he was deaf and too slow to get back from the phone to the car in time to open the gates and cross.

“No-one it seems in this age of nuclear cheerleading in the UK is willing to take responsibility and do something about this dangerous situation.”

Residents say a decades-old system of monitoring trains using a stretch of single track involves a train driver being handed a token by a signalman.

The driver then has to hand the token to another signalman at the end of the single track, who passes it on to the driver of the next train travelling back down the track.

Without the token drivers cannot use the track.

The track is used regularly by trains carrying cargoes of nuclear waste.

The section of single track passes through the community of Braystones, whose residents have to use an old railway crossing to cross the line.

Drivers have to telephone a signalman who then presses a button to raise the crossing barriers.

Radiation Free Lakeland is campaigning against the expansion of nuclear-based activities at Sellafield.

Supporters are today demonstrating against plans to dump the radioactive waste from 27 nuclear submarines at Sellafield.

Protesters meet at 11am outside The Beacon Museum at Whitehaven, where an exhibition is being staged on the history of Sellafield.