TRAIN passengers have been promised 1,000 more carriages by the Government.

But it is unclear whether Swindon will benefit from the changes.

Yesterday Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander said the extra carriages would be funded by the Government and then leased to the operators to try to solve the overcrowding which forces millions of commuters to squeeze into trains every day.

Mr Alexander said the new carriages were an important first step in tackling overcrowding on a network on which more than one billion passengers' journeys are being made a year.

He said: "My department is actively considering exactly where these carriages need to be added and has very recently begun to discuss with train manufacturers how they can cost-effectively be delivered.

"Of course these carriages are not the only answer. We will need investment in infrastructure as well."

Swindon-based train operator First Great Western said that no detailed discussions had been carried out with the Department for Transport but said it was confident in its own plans to deal with future passenger volumes.

The spokesman said: "The announcement is the first information we have heard about the Government's plans, and we await the opportunity to make more detailed discussions with the Department for Transport about additional rolling stock.

"But we are confident that our own plans to refresh our trains and carriages will go a long way to increasing the numbers of seats available to passengers.

"Once the refresh is complete on all our trains by the end of the year there will be around three million extra seats available each year, some 35 extra seats per high speed train service."

Mike Greedy, the spokesman for the south west regional branch of rail watchdog Passenger Focus, said: "This can only be good news for passengers.

"At last the Government is listening to the issues of capacity on our railways.

"But what the impact of the decision will mean on our region we just don't know."

It is planned that the extra carriages will be introduced between 2009 and 2014 at a cost of about £130m a year.

Most of the new carriages are expected to go on the crowded routes serving London and south east England.