STOURBRIDGE railway campaigners have accused London Midland of "taking their eye off the ball" last weekend when a shortage of carriages led to severe overcrowding on the trains.

The situation was particularly acute on Sunday when additional passengers packed the trains to visit the German Market in Birmingham and the Worcester Fayre.

Rob Hebron, of Stourbridge Line User Group (SLUG), revealed the group had approached London Midland prior to the weekend advising them to add more carriages during the run-up to Christmas and New Year.

He said: "London Midland had promised to make some trains longer on the Snow Hill Lines to cope with extra demand but some trains only contained two carriages which made the journey extremely stressful for some travellers, especially for those positioned near to the doors.

"It's bad enough that weekday commuters have to put up with overcrowded trains, but at weekends the frequency of trains on the Stourbridge Line is not good enough and neither are trains with two carriages.

"London Midland is promoting the service of up to six trains an hour to Birmingham on billboards which only applies from Mondays to Saturdays. Sunday services are not worthy of advertising space.

"I don't like knocking London Midland because they do a great deal of good work, but they've taken their eye off the ball this time."

A London Midland spokesman said: "We are experiencing high levels of demand on the Stourbridge Line at weekends. This is being driven by the Christmas markets at Worcester and Birmingham.

"We have been responding to this by lengthening as many trains as we can at weekends and during the run up to Christmas.

"While we can do this in the short term, we still face the challenge of when to carry out maintenance.

"In reality, this means reducing the service at weekends during the rest of the year so essential work can be carried out on our trains."

In the meantime SLUG has vowed to press the train operators for a more robust service on weekends throughout the year.