DEAR EDITOR -- I hope you will agree that it is important for me - through the Advertiser/Messenger - to let people who use the trains at Bromsgrove station know about major changes in the service which are now taking place, and which will also affect Droitwich Spa.

There is some good news, and there is too much bad news.

Most peak services between Bromsgrove and Birmingham will remain more

or less unchanged.

There will though be a new train to Birmingham at 0844 Mondays to Fridays, more Worcester trains will run to and from Malvern and Hereford, and they will stop at Foregate Street instead of Shrub Hill.

The usual northbound daytime service will be one train an hour to Birmingham, Derby and Nottingham at 44 minutes past the hour. These trains will start from Hereford, Malvern or Worcester. The trains at 23 minutes past which have been stopping for the past twelve months will no longer do so (apart from those at 9.22am and 10.22pm).

Similarly, the southbound service will be a train at 21 minutes past the hour, running to Worcester Foregate Street, and then to Malvern or Hereford. These will come from Nottingham, and leave Birmingham at a minute to the hour.

A major loss will be most through trains to and from Cardiff, which stop at Cheltenham and have for the past year given good connections there (if the trains are on time) for Bristol and beyond. The first through train to Cheltenham will not be until 4.50pm, while there will be only two trains back - an early morning one, and a late evening one which will not run on Saturdays.

This means that the chance of travelling to and from Bristol and the south-west via Cheltenham by connections which really only began a year ago) will all but vanish. Travelling via Worcester and Oxford will also become more inconvenient.

The reasons for these changes do not seem to have much to do with the travel needs of people in Bromsgrove.

From the figures which the railways hold about ticket sales, we gather that there has been a roughly 20 per cent increase each year in the number of passengers who have been travelling from or to Bromsgrove by train since 1999. That is a very big increase, even though it started from a low base: rail travel has not grown very much across the country as a whole in that time. And there are good reasons to think that there is scope for healthy growth in all directions.

So why are the changes taking place? And why are the railways not giving us a better service? The government claims it wants an increase in rail travel, and giving Bromsgrove a better service would help significantly in getting more passenger miles by train, and less congestion on the roads.

There will after all still be trains every hour between Birmingham and Cardiff, and they will run through Bromsgrove and Droitwich. It's just that they will no longer stop.

I'm afraid the basic answers seem to be that the government, its Strategic Rail Authority, and the train operators, are more concerned about how the service between Birmingham and Cardiff can be sold,than about serving the intermediate towns properly, and that there are problems about running the trains reliably which could be solved relatively cheaply if everyone concerned applied their minds and money properly.

If any of your readers are likely to be inconvenienced by any of the changes, it would be a good idea to let the following bodies know: The Strategic Rail Authority, 55 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0EU; Central Trains, PO Box 4323, Birmingham B2 4JB; Rail Passengers Committee for Western England, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN.

There could be better news next time as a result.

Gordon Selway

Co-ordinator, Transport 2000

Herefordshire and

Worcestershire local group