CLASSICAL music could be piped into Knutsford Train Station to help calm down vandals.

British Transport Police believe the gentle melodies will either pacify yobs or force them to gather elsewhere.

"It will be low levels of classical pieces," said John Kitchen, of the Community Rail Partnership.

"The theory quite simply is that it's calming and most particularly it's not rap or something like that so it's not their taste."

Last week British Transport Police officials met Mr Kitchen at Knutsford Train Station to discuss safety improvements.

Classical

Over the past year the yobs have caused more than £3,000 of damage and intimidated staff and passengers.

Police crime prevention experts believe loudspeakers should be used to pipe popular classical tunes on to the platform.

Mr Kitchen said the pieces by composers such as Bach or Mozart would be played only as quiet background noise.

"It's not going to be great blaring pieces of Wagner at 100 decibels," he said.

Tyne and Wear Metro was one of the first rail companies to try playing classical music at some stations.

About 18 years ago its bosses visited a conference in Canada and learned about the success of similar schemes there.

They then used vandal-proof loudspeakers at four platforms to trial the scheme. Staff and passengers said the idea was so successful that Tyne and Wear Metro now plays classical music at 12 stations.

"Our staff say the youths have stopped congregating and passenger feedback says the intimidation is not there now," said spokesman Lynne Robinson. "It also fills in waiting time and customers really like listening to the music. Some have even stopped staff to ask where they can buy the music from."

However, Tyne and Wear Metro warned that Knutsford rail officials would have to avoid simply moving vandals to another area.

When the company began playing classical pieces it also encouraged youngsters to visit local organisations such as youth clubs.

"We tried to set up different resources in the area that they could use," said Mrs Robinson.

"That way we didn't just move them to someone else's back yard."

Popular pieces used to calm vandals include Rachmaninov's Symphony No 2, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No 2, the theme from Schindler's List, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Saint-Saens' The Swan. The music of Mozart was used at a bus station in Beverley, East Yorkshire, to deter youths who played loud music, shouted abuse and urinated on the platform. The Co-operative Group, which runs 1,600 food stores in Britain, has also played calming compositions to deter yobs.

Staff first piped music outside late-night stores in Worcester, Bristol and North Wales to stop youths gathering outside.

"These children gather there because often it's the only place open and sometimes it can cause problems and be intimidating to customers and staff," said spokesman Steve Broughton.

"We have a lot of community stores that are often open later into the night. The idea is that the music makes it a rather less cool place for people to hang around outside." The Co-op is now using piped classical music in at least 12 stores in Britain.

"It's not something we're putting in every shop, but certainly it was quite effective in those places," said Mr Broughton. Last week Mr Kitchen said the Mid Cheshire Community Rail Partnership would now consider the British Transport Police's suggestion.

But he said using classical music was just one of many solutions that rail experts could trial in the coming months.

"I think the essential message I want to get across is there's a stepped range of measures that we can introduce," he said.

"All these various strands, we hope, will form a concerted strategy to deal with the problem. It's not a big bang thing; it's going to be incremental."