RAILWAYS AND PASSENGER TRAFFIC [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The correspondence in recent issues on alleged short- comings of the railways overlooks certain factors which should be borne in mind. Week-end tickets are available from midday Friday until Monday night, or Sunday if desired, a week-end long enough to suit all to whom a reduced fare is of any consequence. There are few commodities to-day which are cheaper compared with pre-war prices than railway fares, and week-end tickets at little over half the ordinary return fare were evidently an inducement to the fifteen million people who took advantage of them last year.
The tourist tickets referred to by " W. L.," which gave the holder the right to break his journey practically anywhere en route, are still in operation and over four million people used them in 1927. Cheap day fares, long-distance period, day and half-day excursions on a scale hitherto unknown are now given, trips by rail, road and steamer, sightseeing trips to works, liners, and historic places, and express non-stop excursion trains on which meals are provided on the outward and return journeys are running to various parts of the country every week. A typical excursion is that from Glasgow to London, over eight hundred miles, for twenty-five shillings, with restaurant cars and other comforts provided. In numerous. other ways the railways have shown themselves enterprising and alert, and although the long years of quasi- monopoly they enjoyed unfitted them to adapt themselves readily to the conditions brought about by the new methods of transpoit, I claim, as a railwayman, that they are showing a spirit of virility and enterprise in the queSt for more economical and effective means of meeting the requirements
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