YORK passengers looking to book seats on Virgin trains have been told they can't - because the company does not know when its services will be running.

The York-based Rail Passengers' Committee (RPC) today confirmed it had received numerous letters and complaints from frustrated passengers unable to book tickets on Virgin West Coast and Cross Country services.

A Virgin spokesman said the company was unable to deal with advance reservations while it waited for Network Rail to provide it with timetable information for its extensive engineering works.

The company apologised for the inconvenience to passengers and said it would look sympathetically on any refund requests from people who had looked to book advance tickets, but had to pay full price.

But that has still done little to pacify frustrated commuters who have been unable to plan their travel in advance.

A Network Rail spokeswoman said the situation applied particularly to weekends but said things were improving slowly and the industry was working together to solve the problem.

Ernie Preston, of the RPC, said the situation, which he felt was more extensive than just Virgin, was "totally unacceptable and farcical".

He said: "No-one is in overall charge so you get a situation where there is a battle between the train operating companies and Network Rail about when you do engineering work.

"If there was the will, there is absolutely no reason why these timetables cannot be planned in advance. It is totally unacceptable. It is so farcical. It is like a circus."

One York commuter, who asked not to be named, said: "We travel in ten days and have been told we can't book in advance. My next door neighbour has been trying to book on a service to Exeter for about four weeks and still can't.

"This kind of thing doesn't bode well for the summer. We don't want to have to pay full price because of their failings."

Updated: 10:42 Monday, May 31, 2004