Far better to let the train take the strain

WHY don’t Great Western railways take a good look at the local railway network? Why are we still wasting money on HS2 when the money is urgently needed to reinstate the original railway network?

All they have got to do is to watch Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys programme to see how the original rail lines connected all the local and main towns and cities to make an extremely efficient transport system.

You only have to look at the design of a train to see that it maximises the transport of people, as well as delivering freight to all parts of the United Kingdom without being held up for hours on end during transport, as happens with road.

In an episode of the Full Steam Ahead series being repeated on Yesterday, Ruth Goodman talks to the train guard of the Devon heritage train who says that before they closed the main line to London, daffodils could be transported to the London markets quicker than any lorry. When the line was cancelled it also meant the end of the daffodil industry in Devon. Why is it now quicker and cheaper to fly daffodils in from Holland?

Whilst we are in ‘lockdown’ why don’t the various railway networks get together and devise a rejuvenating programme to reopen local railway stations and create a network where people can travel across the Westcountry ready for the holiday season, if and when it starts again? I can remember as a child the Great Western Railway ran holiday expresses to all parts of the Westcountry.

Why spend hours in a hot car in a three-hour traffic jam desperate to go to the toilet, when you can travel in comfort on a train looking out the window and seeing the scenery passing by? You can’t get a catering trolley coming down the motorway whilst you sit in a car, or get to a toilet in a motorway traffic holdup, but you can get an excellent drink and something to eat off a catering trolley coming down the carriages and in the railway restaurant on a train.

I hate travelling by car anywhere as it always results in me with my head in a road atlas acting as navigator trying to find the next main road exit and sitting in a hot car in a traffic jam, particularly into Weston. We do not have a ‘sat-nav’ in our car as it is too old. Railway carriages are also big enough to be adapted to take people in wheelchairs and other passengers with walking difficulties.

I look forward to if the new MetroWest plans to reopen all the disused train stations and including the building of new ones serving Knowle and beyond to rejuvenate these neglected areas.

Mrs A Earl Henleaze