A pensioner who lives on the same road as the dangerous Foxton Level Crossing, which has a broken gate that has been out of action for four months and will not be sorted for another nine weeks, said we would have ‘lost the war’ if it had taken this long to sort the problem.

Sallie Cook, 82, who lives in Station Road, said: “It shouldn’t take this long.

“They could’ve made a new set of gates in that time. I can’t understand. I feel for the young mums who bring their children to school. There’s no footpath, it’s so dangerous.

“Network Rail need the get up and go spirit of the war.”

Sallie is calling on people to rally together and protest against the problem. She added: “We should stand there with banners. They should be shamed.”

County councillor for Foxton, Susan van de Ven, has written a letter to the managing director of Network Rail requesting a human transport to make it safer.

Last week, a spokeswoman for Network Rail said: “We are very sorry that we haven’t yet repaired the gates. We’ve had issues sourcing specialist parts but are working to find a solution to this problem and fix the gates as soon as we can.”