BRITAIN’S rail network faces a “capacity crisis,” rail union RMT warned yesterday after a private rolling stock company was taken over by German venture capitalists.

The takeover comes as the group plans to fleece northern English railways of around 30 carriages and transfer them south in the hope of a sweeter cheque.

Porterbrook was acquired from a cabal of City banks on Saturday by a consortium of infrastructure investors including the German transnational insurance group Allianz — whose assets total more than half a trillion dollars.

It owns around a third of Britain’s rolling stock — but is withdrawing nine complete trains from the overcrowded TransPennine Express after it secured a longer-term deal with Chiltern Railways.

In an interview yesterday, the chief executive of Keolis — part owner of TransPennine — said he had seen a woman faint on one of his trains as a result of chronic overcrowding.

Alistair Gordon told the Financial Times: “Try getting on a train … and some days you just can’t.”

“It is a shocking indictment of both this government’s policies and two decades of privatisation that one of the most crowded franchises on the rail system is losing a large chunk of its fleet to routes that can offer the leasing company more money and a longer-term deal,” said RMT general secretary Mick Cash.

Mr Gordon’s story, he said, was a wake-up call to the dangers of cutting staff on the TransPennine network.

“What if that passenger had had a heart attack and there were no guards or platform staff to help?” Mr Cash asked.