Branson's trains hit the buffers to the delight of his critics

Sir Richard Branson, the head of Virgin, has just seen his own train set - the franchise to run rail services between London and Glasgow - snatched from his toy box.

A Virgin train in London. Virgin Rail has been outbid by FirstGroup to run the West Coast Mainline franchise. Oli Scarff / Getty Images

When a boy has so many toys he can hardly find time to play with them all, the loss of a train set may gain him little sympathy.

Sir Richard Branson, the head of Virgin, who may be in his 60s but presents a perpetually boyish face of British industry, has just seen his own train set - the franchise to run rail services between London and Glasgow - snatched from his toy box.

Far from feeling sorry him, Sir Richard's detractors are gloating at this rare setback in a career marked by success.

Many warm to the ebullient, challenge-defying nature that for decades has set Sir Richard apart from greyer decision makers. But, as he would be the first to concede, not being universally liked also goes with the super-rich territory he occupies.

"Anything that will remove the smile from his face is OK with me," read one slightly sour comment on the website of The Guardian. "I always found his trains expensive, crowded, grubby and nothing like the image he liked to project."

If that sounds like the revenge of a man who may have had a bad journey to or from Scotland, others were equally short on regret. "Far too many first-class carriages," wrote one, "smelly, malfunctioning trains, massive spending on PR and advertising, overpriced tickets and top that off with the second-worst punctuality/reliability statistics in the country."

Sir Richard naturally has his champions in the spat triggered by the British government's decision to give rights to run the West Coast service to FirstGroup, a transport operator based in Aberdeen. One defender "always found the Virgin West Coast trains comfy and clean" and feared - in a reference to FirstGroup's promise to cut fares - the logical outcome was a service that resembled the low-cost airline Ryanair.

But the acrimonious climax to the auction has also reopened debate about the rights and wrongs of privatisation, the controversial policy ofJohn Major's Conservative government - but never repealed by the Labour administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Sir Richard, of course, had good reason to welcome the break-up of state control of railways, its spoils shared among a procession of private operators. Media reports suggest his group has benefited to the tune of £204 million (Dh1.18 billion) in dividends since denationalisation, to which must be added hundreds of millions of pounds in state subsidies.

He made no attempt to hide his anger when interviewed by the BBC from his Caribbean island retreat of Necker, appropriately enough part of the British Virgin Islands archipelago, levelling the charge of "insanity" at the government's handling of the affair.

First Group won the competition for the franchise by bidding £5.5bn for a 15-year contract, compared with Virgin's £4.8bn. But Sir Richard insists this can only be sustained with cuts in staff, quality and services and will in any case lead to "almost certain bankruptcy".

The winner sees things differently. FirstGroup's chief executive Tim O'Toole, who has been under pressure after a profit warning this year, says Sir Richard is miffed at losing the ability to go on "cashing cheques on Necker Island until there is no tomorrow".

Once tempers cool, Sir Richard can afford to be philosophical, not least because he is one of Britain's wealthiest men. His love of transport in most of its forms is well documented. The earliest Branson business success was with a magazine that exploited the emergent youth market of the "Swinging Sixties" era in Britain.

Selling records in what became Virgin Megastores followed. But it was the launch of Virgin Atlantic in 1984 that propelled him to giddier business heights. His balloon-flying and sailing exploits, for all their ups and downs - and even his passionate commitment to space exploration - added romance and a spirit of derring-do to the public image.

The loss of Virgin's West Coast rail service undoubtedly leaves Sir Richard feeling dismayed. It will impact the performance of his group of companies.

But that group stretches these days to about 400 activities and will surely find a way of absorbing the shock of Virgin Trains running unexpectedly into the buffers.