Saintly signalmen
Sir: Your leader of 20 August is less than Just to the signalmen. You dismiss the work as lacking stress and requiring, at most, 11 weeks' training. In fact, it is very intensive training which a significant number either fail or abandon when they discover what is involved. It is a long learning process before being qualified for a modern high- tech box.
Anyone who has ever been in one at a London terminus, threading trains every two minutes in the rush hour across com- plex junctions, will know the high degree of concentration required: one slip is a poten- tial disaster and no amount of technology can obviate the risk of human error.
Signalmen are a highly responsible and disciplined body of men. There may be, as in many old industries, some quaint prac- tices to be weeded out, but they are com- paratively trivial; signalmen are certainly not luddites and have co-operated fully With modernisation. For example, six boxes have replaced 44 manual ones on the 393- mile East Coast main line to Edinburgh. One-third of jobs have gone in a decade. It is time surely for a fresh start. Certain- ly this is doing the Government none of the good they thought might come from a hot summer of trade union discontent.
Ian Waller
Windover Cottage, Amberley, Gloucestershire
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