AS thousands of people descend on York to immerse themselves in a steam bath of railway nostalgia, Virgin passengers must wish they could return to the golden age of the train.

Advance ticket booking has been suspended because Virgin cannot guarantee services during a period of track engineering work.

This is a double blow. It means no one travelling along the West Coast Main Line can plan their journey. They have to take pot luck on the day, which can cause considerable stress for parents travelling with children, pensioners, people needing to make an appointment and so on.

To make matters worse, passengers must pay more for this inconvenience. No advance booking means no discounts, which can make considerable difference to the fare.

It is astonishing in this digital age of global computer networks that a railway company is reduced to running on an improvised day-to-day timetable.

Virgin is pointing the finger of blame directly at Network Rail, saying it is not providing advanced timetables for engineering work.

This is unforgivable. The improvements to the West Coast Main Line are essential, and a certain amount of disruption is inevitable. But work of this magnitude must have been in the pipeline for months. Temporary timetables could and should have been prepared, published and stuck to. Instead we have more rail chaos.

No wonder RailFest is such a roaring success. We hanker for a time when Britain's railways ran on time, treated the passenger with respect and provided customer service.

The early hitch with the Flying Scotsman aside, the festival has already proved to be a huge hit for the National Railway Museum and for York.

Perhaps Network Rail representatives should call in and find out how their forebears ran a bigger railway better.

Updated: 09:55 Monday, May 31, 2004