Rail passengers could be put at risk if plans to leave as many as 18 train stations in the West without staff get the go-ahead.

That was the fear of transport campaigners, who said passengers would be left even more vulnerable at night at unmanned train stations.

A total of 675 stations across Britain could be left unmanned in a list drawn up as part of a controversial report into how the railways can save money.

Most of the stations proposed to be left with no ticket offices are in London, the south east and the north west of England. But some major stations in the West are also on the hit list, which was revealed yesterday by union bosses.

It covers stations acro, from the south coast to Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, and market town stations as well as suburban ones are in the firing line.

The West’s biggest rail company, First Great Western, said last night it had no plans to close any ticket offices or make any redundancies, but said it was aware of the list and the stations in its patch affected.

The Transport Salaried Staffs Association, which represents staff employed in stations, said it had discovered the hit list that appears in a report drawn up by Sir Roy McNulty, who was commissioned by the Government to discover ways of achieving savings on the railway network.

TSSA officials said the list wasn’t included in the main report, and was only added among the footnotes.

But if the Government enacts the McNulty recommendations, it could mean staff at stations across the West lose their jobs, and are replaced by automated ticket machines.

In Somerset, stations at Bridgwater, Burnham, Templecombe, Yeovil Pen Mill and Crewkerne are on the list, while in Dorset, a number of stations around Bournemouth and Poole – at Branksome, Hamworthy, Parkstone and nearby in Wool – are included. In Wiltshire, the stations at Tisbury, Bradford on Avon and Warminster are included, while in Gloucestershire, Stonehouse and Moreton-in-Marsh are on the list too. Further north in Herefordshire, Leominster station is included, and in north Devon, Barnstaple would lose its staff. In and around Bristol, the stations at Severn Tunnel Junction and Yatton are listed.

Campaigners and politicians are certain to battle to keep staff in many of the stations listed.

In Moreton-in-Marsh, for instance, staff at the train station there are lauded by tourist chiefs for welcoming thousands of tourists to the ‘gateway to the Cotswolds’, and even organised to have direction signs in Japanese installed last year.

In the garrison town of Warminster, campaigners are already making progress in their fight to create a new ‘trans-Wilts’ service from Swindon to Salisbury which would call in at Warminster, while in Stonehouse in Gloucestershire, the line serving that station is set to benefit from more trains and the doubling of the track further down at Kemble in the coming years.

Bruce Williamson, the Bristol-based national spokesman for campaign group RailFutures, said while it was right Sir Roy McNulty looked at the cost of the rail network, cutting important things to save money was not the answer. He said “We’re all in favour of looking at achieving greater efficiencies because we do have the most expensive to run rail network in Europe. But cutting services people need is not the way forward.

“Staff on stations serve a practical use, they help people, they serve them and for people like disabled passengers, they can be the only thing to help them access the trains at all.

“They also are psychologically needed, from a security point of view.”

“At night, train stations can be intimidating places especially, and unmanned stations do not feel particularly safe.

“We would acknowledge that the current systems are not ideal, but if you made the railway station a hub of other activity too, then that might help,” he said.

A spokesman for First Great Western, which operates most of the stations in the West that made the ‘hit-list’, said it had “no plans” to close any ticket offices and make any stations unmanned.

“As far as we are concerned, we have a franchise with the Government, and there is nothing in that franchise that says anything about closing ticket offices, so we have no plans to,” he said.

TSSA leader Gerry Doherty called on Transport Secretary Philip Hammond to reject the cutbacks, warning that passengers, especially women, will feel less safe travelling and will find it more difficult to buy tickes.

“This is a double whammy for millions of passengers. Last month they were told that fares will rise by 25% over the next three years, and they are now set to lose one in four ticket offices,” he said.

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “We are currently considering the findings of Sir Roy McNulty’s independent report and any of his proposed changes to rail fares or ticketing will be examined as part of a Government review.”