2,500 sign up to Shropshire Star's direct London rail link petition
More than 2,500 people have now signed the Shropshire Star's petition calling for a direct rail link to London to be reinstated.
The online petition has been running for just over a fortnight and as of this morning the number of signatories stood at 2,554.
But that figure does not yet include the dozens of readers who have written to the paper to support the campaign by filling in our printed petition.
Time is running out for people to sign and pledge their support for the campaign before the county's MPs present a copy of the petition to leading officials from the Office of Rail Regulation.
They want the facts behind the decision to block a direct rail link from Shropshire to London on the grounds that the rail network could not handle the extra traffic without other services suffering.
To sign the petition, click here
See www.shropshirestar.com/rail
The meeting is taking place on Monday in London.
The ORR will present MPs with a breakdown of the number of passengers it believes would be adversely affected by the launch of a new direct rail service from Shropshire to London.
The ORR backed Network Rail's decision to veto Virgin Trains' bid to start the service this December amid concerns it would put too much strain on a West Coast Main Line route already suffering punctuality problems.
Virgin hopes to get the service in place by May next year if improvements to the route can be completed in time.
But Network Rail has indicated that it may not be in a position to approve the service until autumn 2014 "at the earliest".
