CAMPAIGNERS against the High Speed 2 railway will tonight light beacons to signal their opposition on the day public consultation is set to start.

And they will take their message to Prime Minister David Cameron’s Witney constituency, with a beacon between Chipping Norton and Churchill, at Conduit Farm.

Beacons will also be lit at Finmere and Mixbury, near Bicester, and Chipping Warden, near Banbury, which all lie close to the Government’s preferred route for a 225mph rail link between London and Birmingham.

At least 40 bonfires will be lit along the route from Buckinghamshire to Staffordshire at 6pm.

A spokesman for the Stop HS2 group said the beacons symbolised the “irreversible damage that HS2 will inflict on communities and countryside” and the long-term cost to the taxpayer.

The move comes on the day the Government is set to announce full details of the consultation process and a public inquiry into the HS2 project.

If the £17.5bn plan is approved, construction could start in 2015.

Finmere resident Mike Kerford-Byrnes, a member of Villages of Oxfordshire Opposing HS2 (VoxOpp), will help light a beacon at the old airfield next to the A421.

He said: “We used to light beacons in the past when the enemy was coming and that’s the basis of it, it’s more symbolic.

“It would be lovely if we had one every mile of the route. I understand there will be seven beacons between Brackley and Twyford, east of Bicester.”

Fellow VoxOpp member Mark Barton said: “We’re being short-changed by the Government and we want them to sit up and take notice.

“We want to see an open and honest review of HS2.

“If it turns out to be the right option for the country, then we will say ‘go ahead’.”

Mixbury’s beacon will be lit at Middle Farm, off the A421.

Asked about the consultation process, Banbury MP Tony Baldry said: “I understand that the focus will be on the economic case for and/or against the project. This seems to me to be entirely sensible. There has so far been no independent objective scrutiny of the case for HS2.”

He said the inquiry would “cross-examine the proponents of HS2 and to test their case and to consider whether the money being spent on HS2 could be better spent in other ways on our transport infrastructure”.