Off the rails
Sir: In connection with the Hotel Great Central referred to in Ian Waller's article (26 March), my impression is that this was never a railway hotel in the sense that the Great Central Railway Company both owned and ran it as such. Certainly when I first knew the place well (1925) the hotel was in lease to and run by tenants. Perhaps pedantic corrections of two fur- ther points in the article may be permitted. First, it is not correct that the Hotel Great Central 'stands over' Marylebone Station: hotel and station are separated by a wide roadway which one crosses in getting from one to the other. And with regard to the Royal Station Hotel at Newcastle, where (Mr Waller writes) 'the railway line sweeps in a great curve off the Tyne Bridge', the relevant bridges here are called the High Level and the King Edward: the Tyne Bridge is entirely a road bridge, opened by King George V in the late 1920s.
E. P. Merritt
Boltenburgweg 12, 4030 Ratingen 6 (Hosel), Germany
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