HUNDREDS of jobs are on the line today as anxious workers wait for the announcement that could signal the end for a Hampshire rail depot.

A week ago, the debt-laden engineering giant Alstom, which runs the Campbell Road works, dropped the bombshell news that it was reviewing the future of the Eastleigh site, along with three others in the UK.

About 550 workers would be out of their jobs - 450 staff and 100 contractors - if they decide to axe the Eastleigh plant.

Yesterday, Alstom management and senior union officials were locked in crunch talks to work out a cost-cutting plan acceptable to both sides, with the company's Eastleigh, Glasgow, Preston and Wolverton sites under the microscope.

Last night, Alstom managers were keeping tight-lipped and trade union representatives were playing their cards close to their chests.

It is believed that the news will be broken to workers at mass meetings today before it is released to the wider public.

But fears are growing that the Eastleigh railway depot, which for decades has provided the town with its economic lifeblood, could be mothballed or closed by the French-owned engineering giant which built Southampton's £550m Queen Mary 2.

A source close to the workforce said: "There is a lot of gloom and doom in the works. Many of them are fearing the worst.

"They have been kept on tenterhooks for a week. It puts a lot of pressure and strain on people and it is not a nice way to go into Christmas and the new year."

If the axe falls on the Eastleigh works it would mean that the town's link with the railways, which goes back more than 100 years, would finally be severed.

The loss of railway jobs would be the latest manufacturing blow to the town, which only a few months ago was hit with the news that the Mr Kipling cake-making factory - also synonymous with the town - would shut at the end of next year, with the loss of 423 jobs.

Eastleigh is still affectionately known as the "railway town" because its roots are embedded in the industry.

Without the railways there simply would not have been an Eastleigh. The town is world famous for building fire-eating locomotive legends such as King Arthur and Lord Nelson.