ALISON Rowat is quite right: much of Scotland's transport system is Toytown, and does credit to Noddy himself ("Lagging behind in race for five-star transport system", The Herald, July 3).

 

The current farce that has created the withdrawal of Sunday trains is Christmas pantomime stuff ("Sunday train services cut in productivity and pay row", The Herald, July 2). Oh yes, it is.

The trains operated by Abellio ScotRail are poxy - and these are the main-line versions (Chambers Dictionary: poxy, adj, anything unpleasant, contemptible or troublesome). Those serving Aberdeen-Inverness, the Far North and Kyle are poxier, while the roller skates trundling Glasgow-Galloway and to Oban/Mallaig worthy of a forgotten nation.

Abellio ScotRail promises us real trains on the Glasgow-Edinburgh services to Aberdeen and Inverness, but these won't appear until 2018. We poor passengers who also use the other lines will have to make do with the existing stock, with the laughable promise that it will somehow be improved.

Watch out for our new Borders Railway developing Alison's Toytown problems when it opens in September. Transport Scotland (as useless an organisation as I've ever come across in my years of dealing with it) has specified 158s to operate the line. These 158s are tawdry, shoddy, shabby and every other pejorative adjective, and are singular failures on the Kyle and Far North lines and between Aberdeen-Inverness in any ability to transport passengers comfortably, in toilet facilities, and in capacity for luggage and bikes.

There'll be an outcry from Borderers when these entirely predictable problems come to light - but as Alison Rowat pointedly states, we live in an advanced country which tolerates a toy-town transport system.

Gordon Casely,

Westerton Cottage, Crathes, Kincardineshire.

I READ with great interest two contrasting articles in same edition of The Herald. First, Robbie Dinwoodie bemoans the presence on our roads of "pumped-up" Minis and Fiats as well as sports utility vehicles that ape their bigger 4x4 brothers ("I bemoan rise of bogus monster on our roads", The Herald, July 2).

He recalls with nostalgia the design genius of his first Mini and a baby Fiat, but forgets to tell us how safe or efficient these vehicles were. The fact is, such cars have evolved to take account of the changing environment they operate within and their successors should not be denigrated. Many of us can hark back to the joys of motoring in the 1960s and 70s when the design of new cars was almost revolutionary, but would such cars and their drivers/passengers survive today?

In contrast, and only two pages before, Helen McArdle's Inside Track article "Road deaths up but long-term trend improving", The Herald, July 2) provided the facts and statistics about road deaths and injuries in Scotland over the last 65 years. The article reveals road deaths in Scotland are now less than 20 per cent of what they were in 1969 and serious injuries about 17 per cent of what they were in 1973. This is despite a far greater number of cars on our roads. While a range of factors have helped bring about these reductions, it is undeniable that improved car design and new safety features have played a significant role.

The issue of design versus safety was brought home to me when we changed our Mini last year from a much smaller 2004 model to its "pumped-up" 2014 brother. When I enquired about the increase in size I was told by the salesman that it was all down to European regulations on car safety that the previous smaller Mini model could no longer achieve. A balance clearly has to be struck between design and safety, which does not compromise the latter.

Mr Dinwoodie may feel offended by these "pumped-up manifestations of classic marques", but a thought should be spared for all those who have died or been seriously injured on our roads in or by vehicles that would never meet today's stringent safety standards.

Alasdair Bennett,

Brudhearg, Waterfoot, Carradale, Argyll.