London : More than 150 years after the British laid the foundation of India’s massive railway network, 12 engineers were flew in from India to upgrade 19th century signal boxes on the London-Glasgow rail line.

Network Rail officials were forced to spend around $74,000 to fly in the engineers because there were not enough experts here to upgrade the outdated Victorian signal boxes on Britain’s crumbling rail network.

Without their help, managers overseeing $157 million worth of improvements on the West Coast mainline knew they had no chance of completing the work before the Sept. 5 deadline to re-the track.

There has been much hand wringing and fury here over the fact that Britain still has to rely on old technology and lacked basic expertise despite its proud history as the home of the railways. Louise Ellman, Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Riverside and a member of the Transport Select Committee, said: “This is a very sad commentary on the state of affairs in the U.K. and we need to take drastic action so we can provide the railways with the level of expertise they need.”

“Network Rail should be investing now to train up our workforce so we have enough engineers to do the repair work needed.”

Company officials had promised to replace the five ageing signal boxes in the Stockport area of Greater Manchester as part of a massive overhaul of the line, which has brought chaos for thousands of passengers for the past two summers. But they backtracked and decided to retain the boxes because they could not afford new computer-controlled technology.

The team is nearing the end of the three-week project on the boxes at Stockport, Edgeley and Heaton Norris.

The Indian team, which comprises qualified mechanical engineers, has been useful as its knowledge is based on repairing similar antique systems installed by British pioneers across the former colony more than a century ago.

The Network Rail spokeswoman said: “There were not enough resources within the UK so we were given permission to bring in the team from India who have worked alongside British workers.”