THE sight of more than 1,000 gleaming new carriages sitting unused in sidings was bound to be embarrassing.

So Network Rail came up with a cunning plan to avoid a public relations disaster: cover the trains in thousands of yards of camouflage netting.

The idea was put forward by officials from the Government’s not-for-profit replacement for Railtrack at a meeting with train operators and the Strategic Rail Authority.

Network Rail was worried that media organisations would use helicopters to film the trains as they sat mothballed in military bases at Kineton in Warwickshire and Shoeburyness in Essex.

The trains, worth more than £1 billion, cannot enter service because of delays by Railtrack and Network Rail in upgrading the power supply south of the Thames. The trains are much heavier than the slam-door carriages they are replacing and are full of electrical systems, such as air conditioning and automatic doors, which drain more power from the third rail.

The existing power supply can cope with only about half the 2,100 carriages being delivered over the next year for Connex South Eastern, South Central and South West Trains. The rest will be left in storage for up to two years until the upgrade is complete. Several hundred carriages will be delivered to the sidings by the end of the summer.

Network Rail said at the meeting that concealing the trains under camouflage would also protect them from vandals. But train operators vetoed the plan after pointing out that hiding the trains would only heighten media interest in exposing them.

Network Rail has gone to great lengths since being established in October to try to ensure that any bad news is buried. The company chose mid-afternoon yesterday to announce that Jarvis, the rail maintenance company being investigated over the Potters Bar train crash, had been selected to replace rails on the line. Making an announcement on a Friday afternoon is a long-established public relations device designed to try to minimise coverage.

A Network Rail spokesman said that Jarvis was chosen at a meeting late on Thursday.

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