VIRGIN rail bosses struggle to run a fast railway, but they are the quickest buck passers in the business. Every time their service is found wanting, someone else is found to blame.

Virgin's West Coast Main Line service is characterised by delays, cancellations and shoddy rolling stock. This is never the company's fault, but the fault of previous under-investment. Regular, above-inflation fare increases are nothing to do with its eagerness to exploit a captive market, but are everything to do with subsidy cuts.

Virgin's eagerness to point the finger at others for its own shortcomings quickly exhausted public goodwill. So few will be moved by its case against Railtrack today, even though the grievance is genuine.

Virgin Trains is preparing to hike its fares by nearly ten per cent. The reason: it has been inadequately compensated for the post-Hatfield chaos created by Railtrack's safety audit.

There is no doubt that this has cost the train operators millions of pounds. Railtrack has already paid out more than £600 million in compensation, but Virgin says its share is less than half the revenue lost.

This may well be true. But Virgin Trains should pursue Railtrack for the money, not go after its long-suffering customers. That might take months of legal wrangling, but so be it.

As the company's own spokesman said today: "Rail users are having to help pick up the pieces from the Hatfield disaster, which they shouldn't have to do."

Passengers have endured a pitifully poor service since last autumn. It is outrageous now to sting them for fare increases of around five times the rate of inflation.

In the last few days, things had begun to look up for rail users. GNER launched its £5 ticket deal, Virgin also announced fare discounts, and a return to the pre-Hatfield timetable is imminent.

Virgin Trains has punctured this fragile mood of optimism with a miscalculation of astonishing proportions.

Updated: 10:23 Thursday, April 05, 2001