The new £1m trains they can't use

A multi-million pound stockpile of trains is lying idle while commuters have to make do with aged rolling stock. The stockpile is now so great that a train company is running out of parking space.

South Central - one of the busiest commuter operators in the UK - has spent tens of millions of pounds on the state-of-the-art trains but has been forced to mothball them because there is not enough power in the tracks to put them into service.

The company has 100 of the £1million-each carriages and - with more arriving every week - it faces a growing headache finding space for them.

Rail chiefs have known about the problem for more than three years but have so far failed to get power to the tracks increased so that the new trains can run.

Commuters, meanwhile are having to use 40-year-old slam-door trains that should have been pensioned off.

The National Audit Office, the Government spending watchdog, highlighted the situation in a damning report last week.

But the full story of the power supply "blunder" - and what it means for commuters - is only now coming to light.

Tim Nicholson, chairman of the watchdog Rail Passengers Council for Southern England, said the new trains "should have been the jewel in the crown" for the rail industry.

"There are a few jewels missing," he said. "Alas, there have been so many problems it has rather taken the shine off the achievement. With all the money and effort spent, this should never have happened."

South Central, which operates both local services and longer-distance trains from the Sussex Coast, including the Brighton line into Victoria, is desperately searching for space to store the new stock, which is being delivered at the rate of two carriages a week.

A senior company source said: "We just don't know what to do with them. We have more than we can cope with already and they keep turning up."

Every spare siding and depot space is rapidly being used up. Some trains are stuck at the Lovers Walk depot close to Brighton station.

It is not known when they will enter service but they could be left idle for months.

South Central has a total 700 of the Class 377 Electrostar carriages - worth £856 million - on order from Bombardier, the Midlandsbased manufacturer.

A spokesman for South Central admitted: "We have 172 new carriages in use but have had to store 100. We are taking delivery of two more each week."

The NAO report revealed that by the spring up to 300 new carriages - of different makes - will be mothballed across the South.

More new trains will also have to be parked by Stagecoach-owned South West Trains, which runs the crowded routes into mainline Waterloo. The Strategic Rail Authority is currently working on a £1billion scheme to boost the power supplies but it is not known when this will be completed.

The NAO said the power problem - detailed by the Evening Standard in October 2001 - should have been discovered much earlier than it was. Even when some of the trains are put into service, they keep breaking down.

This is principally, as the NAO report highlighted, because they have not been tested properly, as there are no appropriate testing facilities in the UK.

MPs have declared the situation a "catalogue of blunders".

Theresa May, Tory shadow transport secretary, described it as "unacceptable" that the taxpayer will have to pick up the £7million storage bill.

She said: "What is doubly worrying is that trains are going into service on the rail network without sufficient checks and testing."

As a result of the problems, all of the old slam-door trains will not now be withdrawn in December as originally intended. Three hundred of them will continue in service until June 2005.