Readers’ Platform
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TALKING POINTS
In need of lineside housekeeping
ON page 82 last month is a photograph which shows several pieces of seemingly abandoned rail. Not only is it an eyesore, but anyone who intends causing a serious incident has the ammunition readily at hand.
Why is that still the case?
Richard White Broadstairs
Steam in suburbia
ON page 14 of the January 2021 issue John Heaton remarks that the final steam-hauled suburban service in London was converted to diesel in 1961. At the risk of being accused of splitting the proverbial hair, as far as I recall the Clapham Junction-Kensington Olympia services were steam-hauled until Nine Elms depot closed in July 1967. Not quite in the same league as the Oxted services, perhaps, but steam nonetheless, and in the inner London suburbs.
David Wallace By email
STAR LETTER
Disappointing timescales for
Waverley Route and other projects
WHAT a treat to read Ashley Butlin’s piece on the Borders Railway, but how I groan at timescales involved in any future expansion.
It took 46 years after the Beeching closure to reinstate a truncated section of the Waverley Line, much of it single track, and thus unworkable for inserting specials or freight.