University don Joy Jenkyns has turned television investigator to highlight problems in her neighbourhood, writes Reg Little.

Mrs Jenkyns, of Marlborough Road, south Oxford, will present BBC 2's Private Investigation programme to highlight residents' fury over the ballast dump at Hinksey sidings.

Mrs Jenkyns, a lecturer in Anglo Saxon at St Edmund Hall, is one of the hundreds of residents who believe the Railtrack ballast stockpile has created an "environmental nightmare". She said: "I hear the work going on all the time, in every room in my house. The persistent vibration of the diesel engines is the worst part, then there is the whining of the excavator and high-pitched scraping noises."

As well as interviewing residents, the mother-of-two gets the chance to quiz Railtrack's director of freight about the "virtual quarry", which has been in place for months despite hundreds of complaints about dust and noise.

The programme will be shown at 7.30pm tomorrow. Meanwhile, Oxford West and Abingdon MP Dr Evan Harris, says he will be putting an oral question to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott about the issue in the House of Commons.

Story date: Tuesday 12 October

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