wonder if I am alone in finding an un- warrantable
note of self-satisfaction in the reply by a British Railways official to Mr. Cyril Ray's stric- tures. Is it perhaps true that this self-satisfaction lies at the root of many of the troubles of British Railways? As a fellow-traveller with Mr. Ray on this journey to Switzerland and back, the difference to me between our treatment on the continental railways and in this country was most marked on our return. In Holland, Switzerland and France we were guests; on arrival at Dover we were herded off the boat like cattle (one woman in my hearing remarked: 'I shall never travel by this route again!'), going through the Customs at Dover we were made to feel like criminals, and rather like unwanted nuisances in the British Railways 'crack' train which brought us to London. At Victoria, a porter re- jected with contempt my suggestion that he might carry my hand baggage to the nearby Green Line coach stop on Eccleston Bridge.—Yours faithfully,
F. G. DAVEY
The Press Club, EC4
SIR,—Now that he has had his introduction to the ravages of north European boat travel, between Harwich and the Hook, Cyril Ray could profitably extend his education by taking a trip across the Irish sea. Having made the London-Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire `voyage' more than a dozen times I can assdre your Postscript columnist that a whole new world of incompetence, indignity and indifference will be opened to him before he arrives in Dublin. For a start, he faces a six-hour endurance test from Euston in an overcrowded train—if he boards at Crewe it's standing-room only—in which every second passenger seems to be a child with a tooth- ache. Embarkation at Holyhead—particularly if one is travelling second class as I usually do—is a mad free-for-all. Passengers armed with luggage launch a full-scale assault on the gangway, inwardly cursing all their fellow-travellers but reserving contempt for the inspectors, ticket-collectors and crew who watch the undignified spectacle with the bland indifference of a dog watching television. No one can blame the passengers for their behaviour : suc- cess in the gangway hostilities makes all the differerice between a night of comparative comfort on a green leather chair and an improvised bed of cases on the deck.
Walking down O'Connell Street •in a daze you swear that you will never do it again. But the laws of finance help to confuse your pledge and next year you are in there fighting for a leather chair. That is how it affects me. After one trip Cyril Ray may well decide that Harwich to the Hook is not so bad after all.—Yours faithfully,
22 Westbury Court, Parkstone, Poole SHARE MY. DRESSING
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