I AGREE with the Rev Richard Birt on the relative environmental friendliness of road and rail transport, but his view of country railways in the 1950s is over-romanticised.
The reason why they closed was that hardly anyone used them, even in the days before car ownership became common.
In Herefordshire, Mr Birt is not correct in blaming Dr Beeching for the closures. By 1963, when he became Chairman of British Railways (not Minister of Transport), the only branch line in the county still open to passengers was Hereford to Ross-on-Wye, which closed in 1964, probably still too early for Dr Beeching to have had much to do with it.
David Hood,
Woodthorpe Drive, Bewdley.
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