Moments from disaster

Police were today hunting criminals who almost caused a major rail disaster by pushing a stolen car to within feet of the new high-speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

The car was pushed down an embankment on the line near Gravesend in Kent on Sunday but came to rest in gravel less than two yards short of the track, British Transport Police said.

A £5,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the conviction of the gang, who cut through a wire fence before pushing the car towards the track.

Officers have spoken of the potential for a major disaster if the car had come to rest on the line, which opened only last month and allows Eurostar trains to travel at 186mph.

On Sunday trains were forced to slow down while engineers and police moved the car, which had been spotted by a member of the public who alerted police.

Superintendent Colum Price, of the BTP, said police were treating the incident "extremely seriously" and compared the potential consequences with a
German high-speed rail disaster in 1998 which killed around 100 people.

He said: "This is as criminal as an armed robbery as far as I am concerned.

"If a train had hit that car and come off the tracks and hit the nearby bridge, we would be talking about a disaster of the same proportions as the one in Germany.

"These are criminals - not vandals or young hooligans. This is as blatant a criminal matter as I have seen.

"Nobody is going to tell me that these people couldn't have understood what the score was. The whole of Kent knows how fast these trains go."