Top salaries: Huge bonuses for rail bosses are approved

But although 37 of NR's "members", who effectively act as shareholders for the not-for-dividend company, voted for the bonuses, as many as 31 voted against, with nine abstaining.

The performance-related bonuses, which amounted, in total, to 2.25m for top directors, included 641,000 for chief executive Iain Coucher, who is on a salary of 613,000.

Before the amounts were announced last month, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond wrote to NR urging restraint.

One member at yesterday's meeting in Manchester said payments had done NR "significant reputational damage".

But NR chairman Rick Haythornthwaite said the NR remuneration committee, the body responsible for deciding bonuses, had taken the company's reputation into account when agreeing the awards.