Through-train services stealthily removed
SIR – Dr HJ Williams (Letters, July 11) has noticed the disappearance of through trains from Prestatyn to London and Cardiff. This is another instance of the Department for Transport’s well-known tactic of closure by stealth.
Its method is simple: it makes the service less attractive – in this case by making passengers change trains, meaning fewer people use them – and then argues for running fewer trains due to reduced demand. Eventually it presents a case to close the line entirely.
There were once thousands of odd through coaches, multi-portion trains and hundreds of through trains from less obvious places to destinations in demand, but now they are rare things (outside the London commuter area where the civil servants live).
Their gradual demise is a godsend to the road lobby, which receives “investment” from the Department for Transport, while railways receive “subsidies”.
David Pearson
Haworth, West Yorkshire
SIR – Dr Williams will be pleased to learn that Transport for Wales will introduce three new weekday return services of through trains to Cardiff from North Wales as part of the September timetable change.
These will consist of comfortable refurbished locomotive-hauled Mark 4 coach trains, rather than ones with noisy bus engines under each coach. A full restaurant service, as on the withdrawn Mark 3 coaches – suspended while Covid-19 restrictions were in place – will be reinstated on these upgraded trains. Roger Croston Chester