THE West Coast main line's "Puffing Billies" must be replaced by modern trains, transport minister John Watts has been told.

Pendle MP Gordon Prentice last night demanded action to modernise the key link between London and Glasgow and the North West.

Mr Watts told him that the East Coast main line between London and Newcastle was electrified in 1991 at a cost of £515 million, but that the West Coast line was electrified in the 1960s and 70s with a further £200 million spent on new locomotives at the end of the 1980s.

Labour backbencher Mr Prentice, in an angry Commons clash, said: "It is a national disgrace that so much public money has been used to modernise the East Coast main line, which was virtually gifted to the American company Sea Containers, yet the West Coast main line has been starved of investment.

"We have clapped out rolling stock driven by Puffing Billies."

Mr Prentice asked Mr Watts for an assurance that whoever wins the contract to run the line that new trains would be introduced at the earliest possible time.

Mr Watts denied that the East Coast main line had been gifted to Sea Containers, saying that the track belonged to Railtrack for which the taxpayer had just been paid £1.9 billion.

He hoped that franchising the line would lead to its modernisation and upgrading.

But Dale Campbell-Savours, Workington's Labour MP, said privatisation would just mean more delay.

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