Stephen Byers will meet members of Brag

"Mr da Costa has quite a high profile. I expect the Secretary of State will ask him what he hopes to achieve."

A recent BBC Watchdog telephone poll of 23,000 people suggested that 94% were in favour of the boycott.

"If just 20 per cent of commuters boycott the trains on March 1, that would be more than a million people," said Mr da Costa, a regular commuter on the Bristol to Paddington line.

"Such a protest would involve more people than any other pressure group or demonstration has ever achieved," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Brag, an umbrella group for many regional independent passenger pressure groups, was launched on 8 January, just days before Europe Minister Peter Hain claimed Britain had "the worst railways in Europe".

Advice

Through these groups Brag claims 20,000 "associate members" - ordinary working people who, Mr da Costa hopes, will become activists for a day by boycotting the trains.

The group aims to help passengers lobby rail operators and provide railway companies with advice from customers.

On Brag's website, Mr da Costa said: "I've been talking to my fellow rail-users on a daily basis over the past year or so and people's patience has finally run out.

"The service continues to get worse; the Railtrack situation has been handled in a totally cack-handed way and looks no closer to resolution.

"Recent reports confirm that the track continues to deteriorate, with real implications for safety and now we learn that there are high-level moves afoot to do a 'Beeching by Stealth', by sacrificing thousands of local services."