Children as young as 10 stand on the tracks as the trains approach and leap clear at the last moment. Their friends record the stunt using the latest mobile phone technology.

The craze, inspired by a video clip on the internet, has already killed one teenage girl in the United States. Transport police and rail unions say that it is only a matter of time before there is a similar tragedy in Britain.

The video clip inspiring “mobile phone chicken”, as it is known, is receiving thousands of hits from around the world. The footage, seen by The Times, shows a youth racing on to a railway line as a train approaches at full speed. He crouches on the tracks, waving his arms and, as death appears inevitable, leaps clear at the very last second.

The death in America, four months ago, occurred in California when Celadonia Castro, 14, was hit as she tried to push a 15-year-old boy clear of an approaching train. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

Lee Mullis, 14, and his friend Stuart Adams, 15, were killed in Darlington, Co Durham, in March when a train ploughed into them. British Transport Police said that the boys had apparently been train-dodging, although there is no suggestion the incident was being filmed.

Also in March, the father of a boy from Gloucester reported his son to police after he found a video on his mobile phone of his son dodging a train. The footage showed the boy, 14, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sitting on the tracks as a train headed towards him at 75mph. His friend, who was filming him, was heard shouting at him to get off the tracks. Both boys were given a caution.

In the past three months British Transport Police have recorded 12 separate reports of children playing “chicken” on railway tracks in the North East. A near-miss was reported on the East Coast Main Line at Killingworth, North Tyneside, when a train driver saw a youth dodging a train near the Dam Dykes level crossing. When police questioned children near the scene, they found they had the internet video stored on their phones, downloaded from the web.

In another incident, children as young as 10 were seen playing on the Wylam level crossing, on the Newcastle to Carlisle line, in Northumberland, on April 4.

Vicki Smith, a spokeswoman for Network Rail, said: “The message to get across here is that playing chicken is dangerous. The train always wins. If there’s people videoing it as well there’s an added distraction. We might be looking at more than one person killed or injured.”

Train drivers, who regularly have to deal with the traumatic effects of suicides on the line, say that the “chicken” incidents are causing huge amounts of stress. Tosh McDonald, of Aslef, said: “Even if no one is hurt, this kind of thing can cause enormous stress for a driver. When you’re travelling at 120mph it is stressful to see a kid standing right in front of you.”

A British Transport Police spokesman added: “One of the problems is that we often only get to know of these incidents when they go tragically wrong.”

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