RAIL bosses were attacked today for taking big bonuses - after admitting a catalogue of delays on services from London to the North West.

MPs on the Commons Transport Committee said it was "quite extraordinary" for Network Rail to give staff bonuses of £55m after engineering overruns at the New Year caused chaos on the West Coast route.

They said that after Network Rail was fined a record £14m for the delays, it "added insult to injury to long suffering passengers" for bosses to accept bonuses of up to £300,000 each.

The Committee said there had been 40 incidents on the line, which serves Manchester, causing delays of over 24 hours.

And there were another 171 incidents causing delays of over 500 minutes.

And the MPs say that if Network Rail fails to complete modernisation of the West Coast line on target this December - what they call the final test - the Government should take over.

"It's quite extraordinary for Network Rail to reward its senior managers with huge financial bonuses in a year where passengers have been humiliated and inconvenienced by three separate major engineering fiascos.

"An entire catalogue of management failings has been laid bare for all to see," say the MPs, including Graham Stringer (Manchester Blackley) and John Leech (Manchester Withington).

Today's report said that Network Rail caused very serious disruption and inconvenience to passengers as a result of engineering overruns, particularly at Rugby.

"Thousands of passengers were stranded with very little information about what was happening and when they could expect rail services to be up and running again. Chaos ensued," say the Committee.

They add that while much excellent work is done by Network Rail's workforce, the engineering problems over the New Year were "quite simply unacceptable."

The report says that a promised 1,300 new train carriages was welcome but was unlikely to relieve overcrowding significantly because of the growth in passenger numbers.

The Committee chairman, Labour MP Louise Ellman, said the railways were increasingly popular but she said that failure of the New Year engineering works had provided evidence of "flawed management."

She said that the chairman of Network Rail Sir Ian McAllister had shown no sense of urgency when he gave evidence to the Committee.

Liberal Democrat Transport spokesman Norman Baker said travellers should be encouraged to choose public transport but because of misery and overcrowding they had been given little reason to ditch their polluting cars.

The £14 million fine was imposed by the Office of Rail Regulation in February, to "reflect the serious nature of the overruns, and the impact they had on passengers" at Christmas and New Year.

It also ordered the company to improve its management of engineering projects, improve its communications with train operating companies, and provide a clear plan to complete the upgrade of the West Coast Main Line.

Mr Baker dubbed the fine `pointless' at the time, saying the only sensible way of bringing Network Rail to heel would be to penalise directors through their bonuses. He commented: "All it means is NR will have £14m less to invest in railways, and the Chancellor £14m more in his coffers".

Ironically, the fine was imposed on the same day that Network Rail chairman, who stayed at home during the overrun crisis, was receiving a knighthood at Buckingham Palace.

The engineering delays at the start of the year left thousands of rail passengers facing absolute chaos, with commuters diverted via Sheffield, Birmingham or Coventry.

Network Rail should have completed work on the West Coast line by December 30, but work was still going on during the first week in January.

It said the critical issue had been a shortage of specialist engineering and contractor staff necessary to rebuild the overhead electrification.

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