Work is due to start on dilapidated railway bridges in Durham after a campaign from The Northern Echo showed dozens needed safety work.

The Scandal of the Railway Bridges is one of series of initiatives run by the paper to improve the lives of local people.

It found that more than ten weeks after the Selby rail disaster – where a vehicle ran off the road at a railway bridge – safety barriers were missing from the approaches of bridges between Newcastle and York, the same line on which the fatal accident took place.

The paper was the first in the region to instigate action.

As the campaign was launched the Echo warned: “Railway bridges across the East Coast Main Line through the North-East and North Yorkshire remain in a scandalous state ten weeks after the Selby disaster.

“We visited 50 bridges and found the approach on dozens of bridges to be inadequately protected.”

The survey’s findings were released at the same time as two local authority reports also called for urgent action.

Council chiefs were so horrified by one set of findings that they ordered immediate safety work at a bridge, near Chester-le-Street, where wooden railings had become broken after a series of crashes by cars skidding on a bend.

After pressure from the Northern Echo they were replaced by Durham County Council with metal barriers at a cost of £20,000.

Work is now under way to repair damaged barriers on a bridge near Durham City and the county council is now planning to install barriers at the approaches to the Sedgefield Station new bridge, which carries a main road over the branch line.

Other bridges over the East Coast Main Line have now been earmarked for work and the paper is working alongside the councils to find out whose responsibility the bridges are – in a bid to speed up the work.

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