MORE than £1m worth of work to protect motorists and rail passengers will have been completed by April in the county which witnessed the Selby train crash.

North Yorkshire County Council is about to carry out the final phase of a two-year programme of repairs to dangerous railway bridge barriers over the East Coast Main Line.

Costing £200,000, the scheme to improve three structures means that all 11 of the county's road-over-rail bridges on the main line will have been strengthened.

Completing the project is a boost for safety campaigners, who had long warned that flimsy bridge barriers could lead to a repeat of the Selby tragedy, which claimed ten lives.

The last phase will see bridges at Shires and Sykes Lane, both near Easingwold, and at South Otterington, near Northallerton, upgraded.

Brian Jones, of the council's environmental services department, said: "We will have substantially reduced the risk of any accident by the end of this financial year."

The council had already invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in bridge repairs, despite believing that several structures were the responsibility of the now-defunct Railtrack.

Officials are tomorrow hoping to learn the outcome of a £1m-plus bid to the Department of Transport.

If successful, it will cover the cost of bridge work carried out in recent months.

Further work will be done on roads over minor lines in the next two years.

Mr Jones said the council would continue to work on improving rail safety.

Its Local Transport Plan bid included a request for £50,000 to look into potential dangers on roads running parallel to railway lines.

The news that all of North Yorkshire's main line barriers will have been improved in the next four months is the second boost for campaigners this week.

On Monday, The Northern Echo revealed how local authorities across the country, including southern councils previously criticised for not taking action, were investing heavily in safety work.