I WAS interested in the letter from your correspondent Martin Stoolman (page 53, February issue) despairing the fact that today’s railways are vastly inferior in many ways to yesteryear. This struck a chord with me, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.
Iwas a mechanical engineering student at Salford University from 1967 to 1970, and commuted on a daily basis from my home town of Southport. I would catch the 8.00am from Meols Cop (the last station stop in Southport) and the six-car first generation DMU got me to Salford (now called Salford Central) at 8.50 without fail to enable me to walk to lectures.
This train was nonstop to Salford, there being avoiding lines on the up and down directions at Wigan Wallgate in those days, now lifted of course. Ido not recall ever being late for lectures over the four years I used the service (I still have my season tickets). Yes the trains were a bit smelly and vibrated a lot, but were always packed with mostly businessmen and, to the best of my knowledge, was never demoted to a three-car set. The added bonus was of course if you could get a seat behind the driving compartment.