FOR years now, since the end of the steam engine, the railway companies have tried very hard to run the British railway on the cheap.

They have tried using, and still are using, infrastructures and working practices designed for the age of the steam engine and now what have we got? Dangerous level crossings that still exist and local stopping trains that share the track.

High-speed trains need track exclusively for their use only with junctions and fewer signals, then public confidence could be served and the actual probability of safe operation increased.

Railway operators should be required immediately to have a second trained operator in the rail cab, while the train negotiates the complex stretches of track where the signals are very numerous and difficult to observe.

SIDNEY CULLIS,

Dawson Close,

Worcester,