Work delays high speed travel

The tilting technology promises a faster ride

Train trips between Glasgow and Crewe will not become faster until the end of 2005, despite new high speed travel on the rest of the West Coast Main Line.

On Monday, tilting trains, with a speed of up to 140mph, began operating on the major route from Scotland to London.

However, line upgrades have not yet been completed as far as Glasgow.

Network Rail will carry out the improvements on signalling and tracks on weekends for the next 15 months, causing disruption to travellers.

If the new Virgin Pendolino trains reach their 140mph capability they will cut the journey from Glasgow to London to under four hours.

However, the aim is to upgrade the signalling and tracks and have trains which travel at up to 125mph by the end of next year.

That will take the journey to London to just under four-and-a-half-hours from Glasgow.

Ken Sutherland, of Rail Futures Scotland, welcomed the move but he said the advances should not stop there.

He said: "I think we have had years and years of delay and uncertainty over the project and the improvement at the end of this month will be significant.

FACTS ABOUT TILTING TRAINS British Rail tried and failed to launch tilting trains in the 1980s The first Pendolino train was launched in July 2002 The trains were originally forced to run in non-tilt mode Features on the trains include video and audio entertainment Virgin Trains claim journey times will soon be cut by 25% Travelling at full tilt APT - The lean machine

"But I think we need a future step change to get to four hours, then it will tip the balance in terms of rail travel."

On the day trains began reaching higher speeds between Crewe and London, Alan McLean of Virgin Trains said that most of what "we wanted to achieve will be achieved".

But he admitted that it would be another year before work was completed between Glasgow and Crewe.

He added: "When Britain abandoned titling trains 20 years ago, the Swedes took it ahead and made it practical and the Italians took it on and made it affordable and now we are buying Italian technology, although it is built in Birmingham."

The introduction of the titling trains is two years late because upgrading the West Coast Main Line was more complex than expected.

Nigel Barber, a Network Rail spokesman, said that because of a lack of investment over 30 to 40 years, the route was at the end of its operational life.

It's all about a different journey experience - you go from city centre to city centre..... and it's away from the hustle and bustle of the airports John Veach Virgin Trains

He said: "The most important factor is we have had to do the work to secure the future of the route and to give us that reliability again.

"New titling trains exert new forces on the ageing rail, so we have had to install a new standard of rail to new specifications.

"There had been an awful lot of track replacement to be done and we have had to upgrade the signalling as well to accommodate the passage of these high speed trains."

The upgrading will continue over the next 15 months and Mr Barber said that for passengers between Glasgow and London it would mean trains being diverted or replacement buses for parts of the journey.

John Veach, head of fleet for Virgin Trains, said he believed the future to be a bright one for train travel.

He said: "We can compete with planes when we have learned and improved on the reliability and we can give people a consistent product which they can guarantee to deliver them from door to door.

Hours of work

"It's all about a different journey experience - you go from city centre to city centre, we have at-seat audio, we have new products on board and it's away from the hustle and bustle of the airports."

Tom McCarthy, programme director for the West Coast Main Line at Network Rail, said work was well under way to complete the £7.6bn upgrade.

He said the weekend working was the solution to the challenge of having to rebuild the existing line while having the service during the week.

The upgrade between London Euston and Manchester started in May 2003 and involved about 9,000 people working a total of 24 million hours.

Some 460 points have been installed on the completed section as well as 600 miles of overhead wiring and more than 1.1 million tonnes of ballast.

The West Coast Main Line was built in the 1830s and has developed into the UK's busiest mixed-use rail route and now serves about 75 million people each year.

It handles more than 2,000 trains each day, including 43% of the country's freight traffic.