WE CAN’T let some of Roger Davies’ assertions (Letters, July 19, 'Vintage vision for line?') pass without comment.

Timetabled journey times between Windermere and Oxenholme show 20 minutes for the train (the fastest is 17 minutes when omitting Staveley and Burneside stops), and 45 minutes for replacement coaches. On the first day of total rail replacement in early June, one of the coach drivers, a fellow TravelWatch NorthWest Director who knows the route well, was struggling to keep to schedule, and that was before the more crowded road conditions we experience during the peak summer season.

Bus connections into onward train journeys at Oxenholme only became robust once the secretary of the Lakes Line Rail User Group (LLRUG) had requested Arriva Rail North (Northern) to introduce an additional bus mid-way in the hourly cycle. Up to that point, the buses couldn’t make the rail connections because they were scheduled to depart from Windermere in the train timings.

Some statistical facts:

• I understand that the daily cost of the special West Coast Railway (WCR) service was £5,500.

• 17,000 people used this service during the fortnight of its operation.

• Our regular surveys, researched over more than 15 years, indicate an average of 125 pupils using the train, that is 250 per day. The same statistics also show well into four figures using our trains in the depth of winter, and a lot more recorded in our early summer surveys.

Of course, at this time of year many more visitors use the line, while fewer school students travel once they have completed their exams. At weekends and school holidays the source of school traffic doesn’t exist, therefore their proportion of the whole usage is much lower, certainly when half fares are taken into account.

• Members of the LLRUG travelled on all 160 trains during the WCR operation, offering local bus timetables containing details of onward journey opportunities in the Lake District.

• More than 300 passengers travelled on the consecutive 10:19 and 11:18 trains from Oxenholme on the Saturday of the Staveley Beer Festival. It would have taken six coaches to transport that number of people by road for each journey, with one more to pick up the passengers at Kendal Station.

Regarding the claim about ordinary passengers “were almost outnumbered by train enthusiasts” - maybe in the first week where they occupied the half coach seating next to the guard’s van, when more unusual engines were operating the service, but in the second week with slightly more conventional traction, they were much less evident, while the overall numbers increased significantly. Proportions again.

Some final points about replacement coaches:

• they are not wheelchair or mobility scooter friendly; the replacement timetables quite clearly state “We can’t carry dogs or non-folding prams, pushchairs, bicycles or wheelchairs on the bus services”;

• many of our visiting tourists, especially those from South-East Asia, travel with a lot of luggage;

• all of these categories of passengers are better catered for by trains.

I do agree with Roger Davies' final sentences about the negative impact which HS2 train services will have on direct through trains between Cumbria and London. We all need to challenge the Department for Transport’s current ill-informed thinking on the matter.

Robert Talbot,

Chairman LLRUG, Kendal