FYLDE MP Michael Jack is pushing for West Coast main line improvements to stay on track.

After years of suffering some of the worst train services in the country, passengers between the North West and London are looking forward to big improvements in the next two years.

Mr Jack, a member of the parliamentary West Coast main line group, said at its next meeting on April 21 he would be pressing Railtrack to deliver its planned track and signalling improvements on time. They're supposed to be doing it in parallel with Virgin bringing in the new tilting trains by 2002. There's no indication they won't, but we want to make sure they do." Mr Jack had a trial run on one of the fast tilting trains in Italy last month, travelling between Turin and Pisa: "It was an excellent, smooth ride," he said. "When you were sitting down you wouldn't know it tilted."

When a British experimental tilting train was tried out in the 1980s it was withdrawn after people suffered motion-sickness, but Mr Jack said this did not happen on the Italian Fiat-built model as it does not tilt as much.

"Virgin say they're going to set them up with state-of-the-art entertainment so the two-hour, eight minute journey between Preston and Euston should pass in a flash," he said.

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