Beleaguered rail passengers were last night promised another "huge weekend" of track checking work and a re-railing programme likely to take more than six months.

Checks made since the Hatfield crash have shown that 170 miles of track need to be re-railed, said Railtrack chief executive Gerald Corbett.

This could result in some sections of track being closed completely for 24 hours, he added. All Newcastle to York services will not be operating for at least two days from today.

In a reference to the much-criticised last-minute decision to shut a section of the West Coast main line last week, Mr Corbett said: "We will give people a lot of notice of closures."

He said the track work affected 15 of the 25 train-operating companies, although the amount of work needed to be done varied from company to company.

Mr Corbett went on: "It's not right to say it's going to be chaos for six months, but it is right to say that there will be some re-railing going in six months' time."

His comments came in a news conference after he and other rail industry leaders met Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to brief him on progress made on safety since last month's Hatfield derailment, which claimed four lives.

Mr Corbett said much work had been done to check for the sort of cracks found in the rails at Hatfield.

"There will be a huge weekend of work on the railways coming up, but on Monday the network should be better than it was this last Monday and better than it was the Monday before that."

Mr Corbett said that on a good weekend 20 miles of track can be relaid. Teams managed to do 16 miles last weekend, despite bad weather.

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