Disorganised response adds to rail misery

OF course, you can’t blame the railway companies for this week’s weather, but as ever, their disorganised response to it adds to the misery.

On Wednesday night, my Ilkley-bound train was within a few hundred yards of its first stop when they turned it around and sent it back to Leeds.

All further services were cancelled. Buses were promised but none had arrived when most of us decamped to shared cabs. Of course, no-one bothered to communicate with us.

It was the second time in less than a week that the line had been completely closed, yet had common sense prevailed our train could have continued to its first stop at Guiseley and we’d have been almost home.

All this chaos comes the very week when Northern Rail has the gall to charge nine per cent more for its third-world service without any commitment at all to be nine per cent more reliable, nine per cent more communicative, or even clean their clapped out carriages nine cent more often.

You reported (Yorkshire Post, January 5) that Northern Rail’s profits rose 34 per cent last year on reduced turnover and that the majority of its revenue came from taxpayers in the form of a grant from the Department of Transport.

Yet the company refuses to talk about how they spend the money or how much they pay their complacent executives.

Speaking as a taxpayer – I want my money back from these charlatans.

From: Ian Turner, York.

TOM Richmond calls on Transport Secretary Justine Greening to “sort out Northern Rail’s endemic culture of complacency” (Yorkshire Post, December 31).

The Northern franchise was let by Labour as a no-growth franchise, meaning there is no mechanism to increase capacity as passenger numbers increase.

Northern are doing a great job within the franchise terms. The Yorkshire Post really should reserve its scorn for the London-based Department for Transport who dreamt up the ridiculous concept of “no growth franchises”.