Paddington Station reopened today after Railtrack gave public assurances on safety. More than two weeks after the head-on train crash that killed 30 people, a reduced service began to operate.

Passengers on those first few trains could not have helped but think back to those awful scenes at Ladbroke Grove on October 5. It will take a long time for anyone to forget this appalling tragedy.

According to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott the disaster will mark a watershed in rail safety. The travelling public must hope so.

For they have some very real and continuing concerns. Passengers want to know why so many trains pass through red danger signals. And they want to know what will be done to stop this happening in future.

It does not help for Railtrack to brand these genuine fears as "hysterical". The company's commercial director Richard Middleton used the word in a radio interview yesterday.

His comment caused widespread offence among the relatives of the dead, the injured, and the millions of people who use the rail service. It is not hysterical to be alarmed by the clear flaws in railway safety. It is not hysterical to point out that little seems to have been done since two previous fatal rail crashes. It is not hysterical to question the privatised rail companies' priorities when safety systems that would have prevented the Paddington crash were shelved.

Mr Middleton has since had the good grace to apologise for his remark.

The director of Railtrack London North Eastern and Mr Middleton's successor, Nicholas Pollard, has yet to apologise. He used the same word in a letter to the Evening Press last week. He condemned media coverage as "often hysterical" after we had seen fit to suggest that a company responsible for both maximising its shareholder revenue and for ensuring safety on the railways suffered from a conflict of interests.

When Mr Pollard's letter arrived at our offices, we offered him the opportunity to reconsider its content before publication. He declined.

We also invited him to write an article explaining to readers Railtrack's commitment to safety, and outlining what the company has done and is doing to protect passengers. That invitation is still open.

Accusations of hysteria are not an effective way to address the anxieties of the public. The way to reassure passengers is for the rail industry to demonstrate a renewed commitment to safety.

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