'ARE trains safe?' you ask (October 20). I don't know the answer to that question, especially after the regulator's announcement which was prepared before the Hatfield derailment and does not reflect Lord Macdonald's doctrine that safety must have precedence over train punctuality and performance.

Moreover, the additional £900 million of Government revenue for Railtrack is not new money, but included in the public spending review and the ten-year transport plan announced in July and again in September this year.

The money announced today comes with the rail regulator's strings attached. First, the regulator wants £1.5 billion of cuts in Railtrack's costs. Secondly he has doubled the automatic fines for late trains.

Third, he has increased the penalties that Railtrack must pay to close tracks for essential maintenance and renewals. This makes it harder for Railtrack to put safety first.

Railtrack has accepted full responsibility for the Hatfield crash, but it is the conflict between fines for late trains and safety that contributed to their failure of judgement and the resulting accident.

If Railtrack had put a speed restriction on the stretch of worn-out track at Hatfield, they would have been fined. Those fines will now be increased. This intensifies the conflict between safety and performance.

Mr Prescott and his regulator do not appear to have learned the lesson of Hatfield. When Gerald Corbett calls for "a change in the way the railway is run" he is rightly calling for regulation that works sympathetically with the safety objectives of the railway, not in conflict with them.

Jeff Henderson,

Moor Lane,

Haxby,

York.

...Most people would agree that profit should not come before rail safety. It appears the shareholders' situation is not compatible with providing a co-ordinated public rail transport-system.

The maintenance service now appears rather worrying. It makes sense that job security produces a highly-skilled and highly-motivated direct labour force.

Aware of £65 billion of public investment over a ten-tear plan, it also feels more appropriate to me to ultimately buy back Railtrack, as opposed to a public-private business arrangement, so that the railways would be publicly owned and publicly accountable again.

Mrs P Johns,

Sandy Lane,

Stockton-on-Forest, York.

...BRITAIN'S rail network has suffered from massive under-funding since 1946. That caused problems and the way the last Conservative government arranged the privatisation of BR was a scandal and a huge mistake, leading to even more problems such as poorer safety, too many rail companies, shareholder interest above everything else, no teamwork, too much in-fighting.

Railtrack subcontracted out so much of its engineering work that it was bound to lead to poorer safety checks and controls and poor supervision.

BR had its faults - but it was much better than what we now have.

David Quarrie,

Lynden Way,

Holgate,

York.