Rail passengers on the Cotswold Line will not be able to claim compensation for travelling in “inferior accommodation” on the busy commuter route.

Travellers have called for an urgent explanation from First Great Western over the removal of High Speed Trains from several services, with smaller turbo units provided instead.

FGW made the changes on the Oxford-Worcester line without any announcement and did not notify the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, which represents passengers.

The company said the move would better match the number of seats to the number of people using the trains, but passengers said one of the services affected — the 8.52am from Great Malvern to London — suffered from overcrowding before it reached Oxford.

And the problem was made worse by the number of families taking day trips during last week’s half-term holiday.

A second train is being coupled on at Oxford to offer extra seats, but all last week passengers had to stand from stations in west Oxfordshire due to the cut in seating capacity.

A three-coach Turbo Express train has about 250 seats, while an eight-coach HST has about 500.

In addition, the busy 3.51pm train from London to Worcester has twice been operated by a Turbo instead of the booked HST in the past few days.

CLPG chairman Derek Potter said: ”We were told last year we could expect to see most trains on the line operated by HSTs.

“We understand that situations will arise where, in order for the service to run, it’s a case of a Turbo or nothing, but we would expect to see the advertised type of train provided wherever possible. We weren’t consulted about these changes and are asking for a meeting with FGW managers to find out what’s going on.”

Derek Collett, from Charlbury, west Oxfordshire, uses the line to travel into Oxford and London, often joining the 8.52am from Malvern.

He said he had been unable to work on the train, as he had hoped, last week due to the overcrowding.

He said: “If FGW produce a timetable which states a particular type of train is going to be provided for a particular service then they should do everything in their power to honour that commitment.

“If they fail to do so, then passengers should be able to claim at least a partial refund for being made to travel in inferior accommodation.”

However, the train company has ruled out compensating passengers for running a different kind of train from the one advertised, insisting the move is justified.

FGW’s Thames Valley route director Richard Rowland said: “We made the decision to replace High Speed services with trains which have the right level of accommodation for the number of passengers using them.

“It’s a huge waste of resources for us to run a High Speed service when there’s not the capacity to require it.

“These changes should not make any difference to journey times or inconvenience passengers in any other way.”

wcrossley@oxfordmail.co.uk