People wishing to visit London during the Golden Jubilee bank holiday must wait to make their arrangements if travelling by train.

A computer problem means it has been impossible to feed timetables for June 3rd and 4th onto a computer system used for seat reservations.

As a result, those wishing to travel with South West Trains from Crewkerne or Yeovil Junction (and other stations on the Waterloo line) can't make a reservation to secure seats until next week.

MP David Laws, himself a regular train user, became aware of the problem last month.

Mr Laws declared his disappointment in no uncertain terms, saying: "It seems ridiculous that a large train company is unable to plan services for just a month in advance, especially when you consider that the Queen's Jubilee celebrations make the first weekend in June the most important holiday of the year.

"Many local people will want to travel to London to witness this historic event. It would be enormously disappointing for them if they were prevented from going because of South West Train's shortsighted timetabling."

Mr Laws reached full steam and further blasted the company, saying: "At the moment it is impossible to book return tickets to London for the Jubilee weekend because you must specify which train you wish to travel on there and back.

NO WEEKEND TIMETABLE

"How is a customer supposed to choose a train when the company itself doesn't know when they are running? To make things worse, although there is no timetable for the weekend and bank holidays, there is one for the Friday - and trains are filling up fast.

"There is a real danger that trains to London will be full before local people can buy return tickets."

The Clarion called National Rail Enquiries, which was happy to quote departure and arrival times for the journeys and days in question. But Mr Laws' problems were confirmed when we tried to make reservations with South West Trains.

South West Trains spokesman Keith Hawkins admitted there was a problem, but only for June 3rd and 4th. He explained that timetables for these dates had been ready for months, but the problem had occurred when trying to load timetables onto the computer system which feeds information to ticket offices.

He was hopeful everything would be working by early next week. "We apologise for any inconvenience, and are working closely with Railtrack to solve the problem."

Mr Laws has sent a letter to South West Trains expressing his concerns.