Every travel operator should aspire to efficiency and good time keeping, and the law which allows passengers compensation for late arrival must surely contribute to the upholding of those standards.

However, passenger safety must also play a large part in this equation as rail operators may well be encouraged to avoid liabilities by running services at speeds in excess of what track maintenance should dictate in order to keep to schedules.

A suggestion that could be both face saving and abolish the need to hunt for scape-goats and buck passing each rail disaster now appears to demand, is simple and straight-forward.

It would require an immediate public announcement and speed restriction covering any track fault, this being followed by a 50 per cent reduction in passenger fares over a given repair time.

This would allow all passengers to share recompense for the inconvenience of late arrivals without the odious task of having to claim it, while appointments could be arranged accordingly.

Most of all, with the shortfall in profits thus created it may well be the fillip needed to ensure that track maintenance receives immediate attention, opposed to the present nine or ten months delay we hear of.

When remembering the virtual unblemished 100 year operation of the Great Western Railway, I think these tragedies cannot be the sole result of private ownership.

It follows that running a train at 115 mph does not allow for the slightest irregularity and however well the track may be canted to assist it on bends, it is stretching the logic of ballistics and gravity just that step too far to do so with full impunity. Far better to impose a permanent speed restriction on these vulnerable sections of track and arrive a few minutes late than not to arrive at all.

W G GLASS

Beech Avenue

Swindon