£10bn rail line's 140mph tilting trains will never run

Passengers on a troubled main London-to-Scotland rail route will have to wait until 2008 to see its much-delayed multi-billion modernisation completed, it was announced today.

Cost of the West Coast main line project has soared from the original £2.5 billion to around £9.8 billion, the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) said.

While trumpeting a final solution to the long-running saga of the line, the SRA had to admit that Sir Richard Branson's tilting trains would never run at 140mph on the line as originally planned.

And 125mph tilting running, originally due to start in May 2002, will not begin in earnest until autumn 2004.

Also, the full upgrade, originally due for completion in 2005, will not be substantially finished until 2006, with a final completion in 2008.

Together with Virgin, Railtrack had hoped to successfully complete the modernisation of a line that had long been cash-starved and on which passengers had endured patchy services.

But Railtrack's cash crisis put the whole upgrade in jeopardy and the SRA has had to ride to the rescue.

The £9.8 billion, which is being funded by the SRA and is therefore effectively taxpayers' money, comprises £7.5 billion for making good a backlog of track renewal and replacement. Originally this figure was around £1.5 billion.

Then there is £2.3 billion (originally around £1 billion) for upgrading the line to take Virgin's Pendolino trains.

The modernisation timetable will mean that from autumn 2004, London to Manchester journey times will be reduced to two hours, while by 2006 London-Glasgow times will be reduced by around 45 minutes to four hours 30 minutes.

The SRA said the new West Coast strategy would mean:

• Capacity for 80 per cent more long-distance passenger trains that today
• Capacity for 60-70 per cent more freight traffic than at present
• By autumn 2004, a doubling to four trains an hour from London to Birmingham
• Up to 12 rush-hour trains an hour on the route out of London compared with the originally-envisaged 11 and nine in the off-peak (compared to 11 originally
• Improvements for passengers on trains run by other companies on the route, including the Silverlink train company

Today's announcement follows the announcement in August that sections of the line in northern England would be closed for engineering works for two 17-week periods - the first in summer 2003 and the the second at the beginning of 2004 - to help speed up the modernisation programme.

SRA chairman Richard Bowker said today: "Today's announcement is about the renewal of 780 miles of railway and the elimination of a 20-year maintenance and renewal backlog in the shortest practical time.

"We are proposing a strategy that gets a grip for passengers, taxpayers and freight companies. It delivers reliable, high-quality inter-city services alongside the expanding commuter and freight sectors. Once work is completed, the West Midlands, north west, Scotland and the Northampton lines to London will see material benefits."

The plans have been produced by the SRA as a consultation document with the rail industry responses due by December 16. The SRA is the project's sponsors with Network Rail - the body replacing Railtrack - delivering the project.

Network Rail chief executive John Armitt said today: "We welcome this consultation process which offers a framework for reaching final decisions on the future of the West Coast main line.

"The SRA is taking a strong and welcome leadership on the upgrade of the line. We will work with the SRA to deliver the revised scope of this massive engineering task."

The SRA's strategic planning managing director Jim Steer said today: "The good news is that after all the previous problems on this line, passengers will start benefiting from real improvements within less than two years.

"The increase to £7.5 billion of maintenance and renewal is due to the fact that the state of the existing infrastructure is much worse than was originally thought.".