MINISTERS are ramping up preparations that would allow them to take direct control of collapsing passenger train franchises, rail union RMT revealed today.

The union pointed to changes made over the last week to the structure of government-owned shell companies to pave the way for them to take over South Western Railway, C2C, Cross Country and Great Western Railway.

“Operators of last resort” – the Tory term for the public-sector option – are now in “the final stages of readiness to seize direct control of Britain’s railways,” the RMT said, adding that the government should “just get on with it.”