Why do they want their railway back?

I DO NOT live near the East Lancashire Railway but go on it when I can. It was a privilege being pulled by a Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway 0-6-0, and my late mother loved a run on it. Perhaps we thought ‘volunteers’ could not run a standard gauge railway, but with skill and hard work they succeeded.

In the beginning they wanted to keep the service running to serve transport needs. Times have changed and if zero carbon means anything, the railway has to be reinstated as a transport link. Saving the planet does not come cheap and it has to be a complete service.

Convert the disastrous Metro tram back to train operation with a tunnel under Manchester. The Bury electrics were ahead of their time and the tram has not improved journey times or comfort from that of 100 years ago. Government refusal to back the Picc-Vic line condemned Manchester to forever being a second-class city and resulted in the hopeless capacity crunch along Deansgate.

The line should be extended back to Accrington and Bacup. Anything less means that they are not serious about climate change.

As Heritage Railway says, a tram train with a change at Bury would not work. If it’s a tram it should run up the main road. It must be either a complete modern railway service or keep the steam railway as it is. I would love to see more steam energy transferred to the Hellifield to Carlisle route – the last real chance for a British mainline steam railway for future generations.

Ralph Barker, Crawford, Manchester

➜ Picc-Vic was a proposed underground rail link between Manchester Piccadilly station and Victoria station. It reached the proposal stages and a route was surveyed, but the scheme was cut in 1977 to save money – editor.