Letters intended for publication should ideally add extra detail to our articles (or offer corrections of course!) and not be too long, consistent with the detail they offer. As always, we are sorry that space and time prevent us from printing them all or sending personal replies. ED.
Dales Rails
The photograph on p417 middle in the July issue is at Birstwith station, not Dacre as given in the caption. Duchess of Hamilton on p419 has just the fourteen coaches on, not sixteen: still impressive, though! Ed.
BTC diesel policy
Even if motive power policy after nationalisation had relied on eventual widespread electrification, as suggested by L. A. Summers (letter, July), it would have taken many years to complete and could not be justified for all routes, so diesels would still have been needed. It is a great pity that the LNER 1947 plan for 25 diesel-electric locomotives was not taken forward by the British Transport Commission. This fleet, if allocated to specific train services with dedicated crews and maintenance staff, would have given wider experience of diesel operations than was possible with just LMS Nos.10000/01 and Southern-designed Nos.10201/02/03. The LNER locomotives would almost certainly have resembled these contemporaries, although the BTC could usefully have sent off to the USA for the General Motors catalogue!
The Pilot Scheme for diesel locomotives in the 1955 Modernisation Plan was actually well thought out; the costly mistake was bulk ordering
