A YEAR on from the moment that changed a Basingstoke teenager's life, she is sharing her story about the dangers of railway tracks.

Former Everest Community Academy student Tegan Stapleton had to learn to walk and eat again after she was electrocuted when stepping on a live rail.

The then 16-year-old was celebrating her last days at the school with a trip to Bournemouth with friends on July 7 last year.

After enjoying a day at the seaside with her friends, the teenager ran across the tracks at Bournemouth station to get to her friend on the opposite platform and fell onto the live electrical conductor rail.

The electricity passed through her left arm, crossed her heart and went through her right arm. She suffered a cardiac arrest, third-degree burns over 10 per cent of her body and her heart stopped beating for seven minutes.

The 17-year-old said: “Being in intensive care was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. I’d just always think that nobody was going to love me the way they did before and that I’d never be like the old me again.

"I want to get the message out there that the dangers on the railway aren't always obvious, like the conductor rail and trip hazards. I want people to learn from my mistake.”

Tegan spent five months in hospital recovering and still has to undergo further surgery for her injuries.

Had it not been for the quick and decisive action by members of South Western Railway station staff, who pulled Tegan away from the tracks and resuscitated her on the platform, her mum, Sasha Mullings, knows things could have been different.

Sasha said: “She’s definitely lucky to still be here.

“That day will never leave my mind. She was in an induced coma and was in and out of surgery- we didn’t know what kind of lifelong injuries she would have.

“She had to learn how to walk again, how to eat, she couldn’t really talk and she had to learn how to do everything with her left hand.”

Tegan has now shared her emotional story in a bid to make people aware of how dangerous railway lines are.