The railway system will remain in chaos for as long as people without knowledge remain in charge - Yorkshire Post Letters

You report (October 19) that Trans-Pennine Express (TPE) is to reduce its services further. Until recently there were two TPE trains per hour from Leeds to Newcastle running within 9 minutes of each other, the gap narrowing to 6 minutes at Newcastle.

Some of these trains still run for example at 0942 and 0951 from Leeds; the second is superfluous. Perhaps the most absurd TPE train is the 0529 Edinburgh-Newcastle which gets no further than 30 miles to Dunbar where it is sidetracked and overtaken by another train. When, recently, I saw this train at Alnmouth, its last stop before Newcastle, it had just eight passengers on board.

Five years ago, TPE ordered three different types of new trains when they should have ordered just one bi-mode type of train. This has greatly contributed to the driver shortage which, latterly, has led to their cancellation of about 25 per cent of their trains.

But it gets worse. One type of train was diesel-hauled/propelled train for which a new depot was built at Scarborough. TPE has now decided to abandon these trains at an eighth of their expected lifespan. As long as there are people in charge of railways who have limited railway knowledge and intuition, the system will remain in chaos.