TEN Downing Street has snubbed a 2,600-signature petition demanding that all trains crossing Stockport's iconic viaduct should stop at the town's railway station as required by a 168-year-old Act of Parliament.

Arriva CrossCountry, which operates the franchise for trains running from Manchester to Birmingham, the south coast, south Wales and the Westcountry, will now axe 25 Stockport services from the onset of the new timetable on December 14.

The current 57 CrossCountry trains stopping at Stockport will be reduced by 13 southbound and 12 northbound as the Stockport-Birmingham link is cut back to just one an hour.

When the proposed cuts were revealed earlier this year, protest groups including Stockport council and Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and posted a petition on Downing Street's website.

It noted that to "compensate" the people of Stockport, whose town centre is dominated by the viaduct - one of the largest brick structures in Europe - Parliament required all trains crossing it to stop to pick up or set down passengers at Edgeley station at the southern end of the 27-arch 111ft high bridge.

And the petition branded the Department of Transport's decision to let rail companies ignore the Act "unacceptable".

Downing Street's response, however, gave protesters the thumbs down.

The government claims that CrossCountry's franchise specification "strikes a balance" between responses from consultation, operational effectiveness, passenger and commercial demand.

The 2008 timetable was developed to "make room" for extra trains on Virgin's multi-billion pound West Coast main line upgrade, a CrossCountry spokesman said.

When the petition was launched, Stockport council's transport chief Coun David White complained: ""The last thing we need in terms of regenerating Stockport is less train services. And in my opinion any company that wishes to travel across the viaduct, which was campaigned for by the people of Stockport back in 1840 and is still maintained by the people of Stockport today, should uphold the law and have the decency to provide services to the people of Stockport."