[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—Your observations in " News of the Week " seem to me to deal with a very real element affecting passenger traffic. On the Southern Railway, for instance, the Atlantic Coast Express leaves at 11 a.m., so that a man wishing to join his family, say at Padstow, on Friday for a week-end during the holidays, cannot do so with a week-end ticket.
Then the Time Tables. I bought the June Bradshaw only to find a yellow slip stating that " on some of the railwayi alterations would come into force on the 17th." I then managed to procure a Southern Time Table (which is a re- print of Bradshaw).
I wish you could look at the London-Exeter-Plymouth tables on page 170 and onwards. I consider myself rather an expert on Time Tables, but I confess that I found it exceed- ingly difficult to find out what trains were running between the 17th June and the 9th July, or between 9th July and the 22nd September. To the casual traveller it must be utterly confusing. It is the company's business, of course, but there must have been numbers of missed trains and connexions during the past few weeks.
Then the fares : first-class nearly double the third, and the third lid. a mile, whether you travel 200 or 20 miles.
Many people leave town weekly for their homes, 100 or 150 miles from London, but the first-class season ticket is so prohibitive in price, and the third class so uncomfortable in holiday time, that many are driven to use their cars or travel by motor-coach.
The road is not quite so popular as it was, for various reasons, and I believe that if the railways were to try to attract custom they would quickly and largely increase their passenger traffic.
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