I read the account of the Minister of Transport's enquiry
into the closing of piers on the Clyde with Denis Brogan's article, " Doon the Water," in a recent Spectator swinging back into memory. I have heard a good deal since then of the severe hardship the cessation of steamer-calls at Kim. Strone and Kilmun imposes on residents in those waterside villages, for whom the steamers provided the only practicable link with Greenock and Glasgow. Nothing apparently can be done, for the Railway Executive, which owns the piers, is inexorable, and the Minister has only power to lay down lines of general policy, not interfere in the details of day-to-day working. Mr. Maclay could be counted on to do all that was possible, if only because his own constituency, Renfrew West, is near enough to the isolated, or about-to-be-isolated, area for repercussions of- general indignation to make themselves felt (quite unjustly) dre. The- Caledonian Railway may not have had much in the way of soul.- British Railways has not enough to provide seating- space for a flea. * *
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