Britain’s biggest train company is scrapping its most reliable trains more than a decade earlier than scheduled, and introducing cheaper trains that break down twice as often.

South West Trains (SWT) will send 120 Class 442 carriages into storage in sidings next week despite protests by Passenger Focus, the national rail passenger watchdog.

The electric trains, which operate between London Waterloo and Weymouth, were built in 1988 and 1989, and could have remained in service until at least 2020.

They develop faults on average once every 29,000 miles, compared with one breakdown every 14,000 miles for the Class 458s being introduced by SWT. The company will save £1.5 million a year by cutting more than 50 jobs at the Bournemouth depot where the Class 442s are maintained.

Anthony Smith, chief executive of Passenger Focus, said: “It is crazy when there’s a desperate need for more trains that these modern, popular and comfortable trains will be languishing in sidings getting rusty. What this shows is that the structure of the train leasing and franchising system makes it extremely difficult to organise the sensible movement of trains to where they are most needed.”

The move means that commuters on the Portsmouth line will have to travel on trains with five seats across the carriage instead of four. The new trains were designed for short trips to the suburbs of London.

SWT says that it is providing thousands more seats on the overcrowded line, but largely by using narrower seats. The company has come under fire for packing in more passengers on routes in London by removing seats and toilets.

The operator is under pressure to cut costs to meet the terms of the franchise contract it signed last year. It has agreed to pay the Government £1.2 billion over ten years, more than any other train company.

Roger Ford, technical editor of Modern Railways magazine, said that SWT’s 450,000 passengers each day were to pay higher fares for an increasingly overcrowded service.

The company already has the worst overcrowding on the network, with almost a third of passengers having to stand in the peak morning period on some trains arriving at Waterloo. SWT expects numbers to grow by 50 per cent in the next decade but has abandoned plans to lengthen platforms for longer trains.

Mr Ford said: “There will be no significant investment to support the growth, with passengers getting little in return for the huge sums to be paid to the Government.”

Network Rail published proposals last year for extending platforms at Waterloo and building a new concourse. But the £1 billion scheme is unlikely to start until after the 2012 London Olympics and would not be completed until 2017.

An SWT spokeswoman said that passengers on Weymouth services would get much newer trains, which were becoming increasingly reliable.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Transport Secretary, said that the Government had failed to produce a plan for coping with worsening overcrowding and was focusing on reducing the £5 billion annual subsidy paid to the industry.

“Train companies are under pressure to bid as high as they possibly can to hold on to their franchises. The highest bidder tends to be the company which aims to push up fares the highest and to squeeze the most passengers on to its busiest trains.”

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