UNION bosses have organised a series of protests along the East Coast Main Line to mark the final day of its operation in the public sector.

Virgin Trains East Coast will take over as the long distance operator on the line from publicly-owned East Coast on Sunday (March 1).

East Coast has been running the line since National Express gave up the franchise in 2009.

In that time it has returned more than £1 billion to the Treasury.

RMT is planning protests on Saturday (February 28) at Kings Cross, Edinburgh Waverley and Doncaster.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “This weekend, in an act of gross national betrayal of the British people that will cost us dear, the route is being handed over to Virgin/Stagecoach to be run again solely in the interests of private profit, taking a third gamble after the two previous corporate failures.

“This re-privatisation is based on pure, hard-right, Thatcherite ideology and is an act of industrial vandalism that will smash apart Britain’s most successful rail company for just one reason – it is publicly owned.

“On Saturday RMT will mark this latest scandal on Britain’s privatised railways and the union will renew the fight to return the entire network to public ownership – a policy supported by 70 per cent of the British people.”