YP Letters: Too many trains for our creaking rail network

I MUST take issue with Gerald Hodgson’s comments (The Yorkshire Post, November 27), in particular with upgrading the railway.

There is a popular misconception that we can simply go on improving the infrastructure to accommodate more and more trains.

During the past several years massive improvements have been made to signalling, not least by the opening of the new signalling base at York, one of 12 to eventually control the whole country.

From here trains are increasingly controlled by computer programme which allocates them a time slot and prepares the route ahead.

This is all very well, but there are a finite number of trains which are trying to squeeze into a network reaching breaking-point.

The concept of HS2 is not to get from Leeds to London 20 minutes earlier, but rather to remove long distance trains from the existing network, thus freeing up space for more local services and freight.

The railways have in many ways been a victim of their own success, irrespective of how the public views them. One thing is for sure.

They cannot go on trying to get a quart into a pint pot.