The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
I note a change of subject in N Draper’s latest letter (Oct 15) and presume that this is to avoid the main point of my letter which was why he chose to live next to a railway then complain.
It may have escaped his notice that not one other person between Woolram Wygate and Goodfellows is complaining but then you always get one, don’t you?
The workers seen recently were not Network Rail employees but contractors carrying out the line upgrade and so employed by private companies.
Apart from a fuel tanker train to Felixstowe which goes passed at 9.25pm one day a week, the last train is still at 9pm. However the first booked train of the day is at 12.25am (Tues to Sat).
Hawthorn Bank barriers are normally lowered for two to three minutes which just gives sufficient time for signals over two miles away to be cleared to green so trains can continue at live speed (70mph).
I have never been on the payroll of any railway but as the son of a professional railwayman with 45 years’ service, did develop an interest in railways.
I have done about 30 years as an unpaid volunteer on two of our heritage steam railways operating trains. This has lead to me meeting many interesting people including the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Prince Edward, and the highest member of the Royal Family on an ordinary passenger train on her way to Sandringham.
Now are you, Mr Draper, one of the nerds on the internet who live in a plastic ideal computerised virtual perfect world? Because it seems so to me.
Where do I live? Well it’s a lot closer to the railway than where you live and to give you a clue, it was built when Hawthorn Bank was probably a cart track and it has the tallest chimney stacks in the road.
I would rather have trains passing than the idiots who drive by at speeds up to 50mph in the 30mph limit even when little tots are coming to and from school.
As for Lord Porter and Cameron, I would not trust them, or you. From their scant knowledge of actually running a railway to organise a derailment on a kiddies’ clockwork train set.
I now close the subject
David Mead
Hawthorn Bank
Spalding
