All change here

SIR – South West Trains (Stagecoach) has this week relinquished the franchise that it held for more than two decades, running trains in and out of Waterloo. Bearing in mind the infrastructure it inherited, it has done a reasonable job, albeit by sticking with platform levels that were in operation for slam-door trains with a step up into the carriage.

However, some features of this change of operator are worrying. First, that this switchover is taking place in the middle of the Waterloo station upgrade. Secondly, that after the partial delivery of new 707 class trains, the rest of the order has apparently been cancelled. It will perhaps be 18 months before trains come on stream for the new operator (the First Group and Chinese consortium). Whatever one thinks of railway privatisation, there must be better, less expensive ways of changing franchise.

I’d like to thank South West Trains for the past 20 years or so, but I will want to see an amazing improvement from the new operators, otherwise why bother to change? Simon Douglas Lane

Hampton, Middlesex