YP Letters: Firm's new trains on order will be driver-only

YOUR correspondent Bill Adams of the TUC (The Yorkshire Post, July 7) omits one very important point in his letter on the driver-only operation of Northern Rail – the fact that new trains are on order and that the driver-only operation applies to these.

This omission indicates that either he is not in possession of all the facts, in which case it is reasonable to suggest that he at least should not be sounding off on the subject, or that he omitted the fact, since it undermines the argument against driver-only operation.

The current trains do not comply with the regulations regarding disabled access and cannot economically be made to do so when these come in in three years’ time. The new trains will, of course, comply with these requirements and will incorporate features designed to make them safe to operate without guards. For example, no train will be able to start until all the doors are closed.

Perhaps Mr Adams should be asking why these trains are being built in Spain and not in the UK.

The reluctance of the RMT, and its predecessor the NUR, in accepting new practices has maybe gone some way towards the demise of the rolling stock industry in the UK and why productivity is so low in this country.