Should we just accept disruption to our rail services?

WHAT has happened on Network Rail is too disgusting for words. The boss’s attitude is appalling, but that’s how things are done these days. They draw big bucks, but won’t roll up their sleeves when things get tough.

TED SHEPHERD, Windsor, Berks. WHy the surprise that Network rail boss Mark carne wouldn’t return from his £800,000 second home in cornwall to marshal his staff in the recent rail chaos? He’s one of a breed of corporate mandarins whose only remit in life seems to be to receive grossly over-inflated salaries with bonuses. As MPs, who get paid a lot less by comparison, have the luxury of being able to dip their noses in the expenses trough, the executives of rail, power and other utility corporations are able to command vast pay deals that isolate them from the real world. From their ivory towers they dispense advice to us minions on how we should respond to the financial and social chaos caused by their policies and decisions, while remaining immune from the problems they create. And the worst thing is that they all think they’re worth the money. This situation is so far out of hand as to be irredeemable.

D. FOSTER, Bournemouth, Dorset.

THE over-running engineering works at King’s Cross came as no surprise to me nor will it be to anyone else whose local station has been affected by construction work. At my local station, Berkhamsted, they’ve been installing three lifts up to the platforms for the best part of two years. The Access For All posters announcing the work have never been updated and still state the job will be completed by summer 2014. No doubt when the work is finished it will be worth all the disruption, which Network Rail will probably describe as ‘regrettable’, and it will be nice to get back the chunk of car park taken over by the contractor’s equipment and storage. But when will that be? Summer 2015?

DAVID PATTERSON, Aylesbury, Bucks. AS A passenger who travelled down the East Coast main line and across London at the weekend, I feel compelled to give a different perspective to the universal slating of the rail system. The work at King’s Cross wasn’t just routine maintenance but a strategic upgrading to improve services across London. Trains were cancelled, there were delays and people were inconvenienced, but the information flow was reasonable not only on the day but before the event. when booking our tickets a month ago, we were warned of the risk of project over-run and the possibility of disruption. Engineering is the real world and its consequences are real and immediate. Any small lapse on the railways may cause death. More people die on the average morning on the roads than are killed annually on the railways.

MARTIN TERNOUTH, Bridport, Dorset. WHEN railway signalling equipment is disconnected for engineering work but trains still need to run, a safe working method has to be implemented — and one way of doing this is by hand signalmen using flags rather than verbal commands to instruct train drivers to stop or proceed. The rules for this method of operation have been in place for many years: there’s a strict process of instruction and testing of competence. Trains passing through an area controlled by hand signalmen would probably travel at 25mph or less. J.J. KOZMINSKI, chartered engineer,

Woldingham, Surrey.