19 AUGUST 1949, Page 18

RAILWAY ELECTRIFICATION

SIR,—Onc of the traditional pleasures of railway travel has been the ability to look out of the window.

As we rush, as we rush in the train, The trees and the houses go wheeling back.

So wrote James Thomson in the 1870s, but the view has been rendered less attractive in recent years by, amongst other things, the remorseless spread of overhead wires. The passenger may therefore perhaps be allowed to plead in favour of the " third rail " method of electrification, and to beg the Transport Conamis,ioners to avoid the erection of gantries, cables and other disfigurements which must still further curtail his enjoyment of the passing scene.—Yours faithfully, Worcester College, Oxford. R. L. P. MILBURN.