DOZENS of train carriages used on rural lines are to be taken out of service by Britain’s biggest train company to save money.

The shorter trains will mean that thousands of passengers a day will have to stand during the summer on services across the West Country. Two-carriage trains will serve some stations where up to 400 people will be queueing to board in July and August.

The worst-affected routes will be from Cardiff to Portsmouth via Bristol; from Weston-super-Mare to Bristol; and the St Ives branch line in Cornwall.

First Group, which has agreed to pay the Government £1 billion over the next decade for the right to run the Greater Western franchise, will save £100,000 a year for each carriage it removes. These will be returned to the leasing companies that own them and stored in sidings. They are likely to be stripped of their special liveries depicting West Country scenes such as St Michael’s Mount and the great gardens of Cornwall.

Keith Walton, chairman of the Severnside Community Rail Partnership, said: “It is scandalous that the Government is allowing these carriages to be withdrawn only a year after it gave permission for trains to be lengthened to cope with rising demand.

“The existing three-coach trains between Trowbridge and Bath have more than 40 people standing in the peak so it makes no sense to cut them down to two coaches. Nothing is more likely to push people back into their cars than having to stand all the way on a train.”

The Times revealed two weeks ago that, from December, First Group was planning to remove up to half the daily trains on branch lines and three quarters of the services at rural stations on main lines.

Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, admitted that he was partly responsible for the West Country cuts. He said: “I am not seeking to avoid blame. We cannot be in the business of carting fresh air round the country. If we are terrified to go near any service for fear of flak, then sooner or later we will come a cropper.”

Mr Darling said that the Liskeard-to-Looe branch line, in Cornwall, which is losing five of its thirteen daily services, had attracted an average of only nine passengers a train in the twelve months to last April. But the Devon and Cornwall Community Rail Partnership said that Mr Darling was using misleading figures based only on tickets sold.

Richard Burningham, the partnership’s manager, said: “Trains on the Looe branch are so crowded in summer that the conductor cannot get down the aisle to sell tickets.”

First is understood to be reconsidering some of the December cuts after 5,000 passengers wrote in to object.

First said: “We won’t be able to accommodate every suggestion but we do promise to look at the feedback we have received and make changes where possible within the financial and timetable constraints of the franchise.”

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