Virgin fast-tracks Cabinet as public takes the strain

Richard Branson's Virgin company is to lay on special trains for Cabinet ministers and Labour Party functionaries while forcing hundreds of thousands of ordinary passengers between London, the north and Scotland on to buses in the biggest shutdown of a British main line in decades.

There was huge disruption yesterday as the line between Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes was shut down and 200 buses provided to shuttle passengers for Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow between the two points. The shutdown will last for 18 weeks. It will continue today and every Saturday and Sunday until 8 December, adding hours to the journeys of 60,000 people each week.

The closure has been imposed by Railtrack as part of its botched upgrade of the West Coast Main Line which is running two years behind schedule and so over-budget that Virgin is being paid £106m of taxpayers' money in compensation by the Strategic Rail Authority.

While rejecting pleas from passenger groups for a less draconian shutdown over the busy holiday period, Virgin and Railtrack will make an exception for delegates to the Labour conference in Blackpool next month. Most senior Cabinet figures, including Gordon Brown, John Prescott, and Jack Straw, are expected to travel to Blackpool by train.

A letter sent by the party's head office says: "To minimise disruption to those travelling [to the conference], Virgin Trains are providing a special direct service from London Euston to Blackpool." It invites delegates to quote a special number to buy a £55.50 Saver Return for one of three special trains on the weekend of 28/29 September.

The last time Labour held its conference in Blackpool, in 1998, a train carrying Cabinet ministers to the conference was delayed, leading to an attack on Virgin from the conference platform by the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, in which he described the privatised railways as a "national disgrace". Later another Virgin train taking delegates home broke down.

A Virgin spokesman said last night they were laying on special trains for the Labour conference as they would for any major event – although there were no others in the pipeline.

"What we learnt four years ago is that you don't screw up at a party conference. Last time we got it completely wrong and the company was restructured, partly as a result," the spokesman said.

The project to update the West Coast Main Line to allow Richard Branson to run 140mph tilting trains, slashing journey times, has turned into what civil engineers are calling the most expensive civil engineering fiasco in British railway history. The initial cost of £2.1bn has spiralled to £10bn – 20 times the price the entire national network was sold for by Railtrack.

The civil engineers, Bechtel, who were brought in by ministers after the costs of London's Jubilee line extension ran out of control, believe the price could rise as high as £13bn. Some civil engineers think it would have been cheaper to build an entire new line to the north-west, along the lines of the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

The problem is compounded by the compensation obligations to Virgin. The £106m of taxpayers' money so far agreed is to March 2003, but insiders say it ultimately could rise to £556m if the timetable continues to slip at the current rate.

The official reason for the 18-weekend shutdown between Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes is for eight crossovers to be replaced with higher speed turnouts. Health and safety rules dictate that that the four tracks are too close to each other to allow two to be used while engineers work on the other two. Thus the line has to be shut in its entirety. In the British Rail era, it would have been possible to keep two of the tracks in use, and engineers say the work could have been completed in just six weekends at much reduced cost.

The chairman of the Rail Passengers' Council, Stewart Francis, has described the the whole West Coast upgrade as "deeply worrying" and has written to the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, demanding a public inquiry.