I HAVE no axe to grind over whether or not rail is re-nationalised or not.

I rarely use the railways and the only advantage I can see in nationalisation appears to be the ability to use any train at any time for a journey.

The problem I have with the Guardian’s Fly in the Ointment article is that although he criticises Northern Rail he doesn’t explain how re-nationalisation would improve matters.

His article is full of criticism but considerably short on how improvement would happen.

I can’t address every detail of his long article in the space of a letter but here are a few comments.

He complains about his planned trip to Liverpool.

The lengthy timescale of which was apparently caused by the ongoing refurbishment of Lime Street station.

Is he suggesting that under nationalisation that refurbishment would never have to happen because Lime Street would be allowed to fall into decay, or is he suggesting that refurbishment would somehow magically happen overnight with no disruption to normal services?

He also talks about driver training asking: ‘If the train companies knew in advance they didn’t have enough trained drivers and hadn’t had enough time to prepare, why on earth did they go ahead with the changes?’ Perhaps I can help answer his question.

The companies did not know in advance.

They cannot train drivers on new routes until they know what those routes are.

The approval of those routes is outside the control of the companies.

They are given a planning timeframe of approval by the body that undertakes the approval process.

Timetables are prepared and issued on that expectation with an allowance for a degree of delay.

In the event the approval body was unable to meet the time frame it had given to the companies, as a consequence the companies had insufficient time to train the drivers on the new routes.

This reduction in time availability for training was outside the control of the companies.

He concludes his article by agreeing with the idealogical emotive statement of Andy Burnham which says ‘This fragmentised, privatised rail system simply isn’t capable of working etc, etc.’ Quite frankly, simply saying something doesn’t make it true, you have to say why.

Perhaps he could start by explaining why the global privatised air travel system apparently works so well, or as Andy Burham might say ‘the global fragmentised air travel system.’ As I said, I have no axe to grind about nationalisation providing it provides an overall better quality of service for rail users.

However we cannot rely on wishful thinking we need to know how.

Don Micklewright Weaverham