Am I the only person to be reading and listening to the accounts of the latest rail disaster with increasing anger and amazement at the attempts to pin the blame on the wretched driver of one of the trains who was killed in the crash?

Owing to under-investment in the railways over a number of years - and the last Conservative government must carry the bulk of the blame for this - the driver had to pick out a red signal that might have been hidden by gantries anyway, a system that has been phased out in France and Germany some time ago. It is only due to the skill of the drivers - and probably luck - that we do not have more accidents on our railways.

The new safety system, that would have prevented this accident, was considered to be 'too expensive' to install. After all the cost, pain and disruption that this accident has caused it would have paid for itself already.

G O Worsley,

Heslington,

York.

...Wouldn't it be better if Railtrack was nationalised, and the train-operator system left in place? By this I don't mean that the train companies had no responsibility. I mean that by nationalising the track owners we could increase the track

safety. In the end, it seems that Railtrack is having to try too hard to keep profits up. Instead, if nationalised, Railtrack could vastly increase the proportion of track-usage fees going into track and signalling renewal. This could also allow for a lowering of track access fees, with a knock on effect on train prices.

Graham Martin,

Grosvenor Terrace,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.