Scheming Con-Dems faced renewed anger this morning as protesters across Britain offered passengers a left-wing alternative to privatising the successful state-owned East Coast rail franchise.

Commuters passing through over a dozen stations on the East Coast Main Line found Action For Rail campaigners waiting to greet them with dire warnings about the coalition's plans.

Itself a stop on the line, York plays host to the Liberal Democrat spring conference this weekend.

The line's state-owned holding company Directly Operated Railways reported £208.7 million in revenue from the London-to-Scotland route last year, despite rescuing it from debt-ridden privateer National Express in 2009.

Meanwhile, Department for Transport figures showed that the taxpayer spent just half a penny in subsidies for every mile travelled on the East Coast Main Line - just one-twentieth of the average subsidy among its free-market rivals.

Yet Tory Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has insisted on handing the lucrative route back to a private bidder before the 2015 general election, acclaiming franchising as a "force for good."

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said: "By taking the East Coast out of public ownership the government will be passing the income the line raises into the pockets of corporate shareholders when it should be using the cash to reduce rail fares and improve services for passengers."

Rail union RMT leader Bob Crow agreed and added that the decision would "haunt" Lib Dems and Tories alike.

"The fact that the Lib Dems are lined up with their Conservative coalition bosses on the plans to take a wrecking ball to the highly successful, publicly owned East Coast rail service helps explain their collapse in the opinion polls, as the British people see them as nothing but voting fodder for this rotten, right-wing government," he said.

Fellow rail union TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes said Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg should be ashamed.

"As a publicly run line, it has paid over £600m to the Treasury and costs less to run than all the other private rail firms who rely on public subsidies to make profits," he said.