Holidaymakers face summer of chaos on Britain's failing railways

It's the summer holidays. But for families wheeling suitcases down to the local railway station, it's going to be a long, hot summer - for all the wrong reasons.

Engineering works: two words that immediately conjure up images of slow trains, replacement bus services, frustration and missed connections - are set to make August the most disruptive month on our railways. The West Coast main line, one of the two main north-south routes running from London to Manchester and Scotland, and the Trent Valley area will be the worst hit.

With fewer commuters travelling, August is seen as the best month to tackle some of the track and signalling upgrading that is vital to reduce the problem. Such disruption will not be confined to this summer. Weekend closures, already a regular feature of the rail system, will continue for years, predict experts.

Britain has the oldest railway network in the world. When Robert Stephenson, son of George, employed 20,000 men to build the London-to-Birmingham main line in 1838, the feat of engineering was compared with the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza. But what should have been a head start has turned into a liability. Decades of neglect, underinvestment and a bungled privatisation have turned the pride of Victorian industry into a continental laughing stock. 'At a certain point in time,' Guillaume Pepy, head of the French operator SNCF, once said, 'you forgot your own railway.'

Earlier this year Spain unveiled a service which connects Barcelona to Madrid, a journey of more than 300 miles, in two and a half hours -top speed nearly 220mph. Arriva Trains Wales, meanwhile, has just advertised for 'high-speed' rolling stock which has a somewhat different definition. It will be expected to reach 53mph between Holyhead and Cardiff.

Rail travel in Britain is also more expensive than anywhere else in Europe, according to a study by the travel agent Thomas Cook. In February it published figures showing that in Britain £10 will buy just 27 miles of travel by train, compared to 38 miles in Ireland and 50 in France. Recently the news that fares will soar yet again by as much as 10 per cent because of inflation generated another round of negative headlines.