Taking into account that I am the closest resident to the railway track in Spalding I can only assume that the contents of D Taylor-Corbett’s letter are nothing but an elaboration of the facts.
The front of my residence is 6ft away from passing trains and there is hardly any vibration and also the sound of passing trains in the night does not keep me awake all night.
The installation of welded rail eliminating bolted rail joints has cut the sound drastically.
As for the sound of locomotive horns they are not required to be used.
There was a requirement to use them when engineers were working on the line to warn them that the train was going to move.
There are two regular freight trains at night booked to pass at 00:28 and 05:24.
The other train at approx 03:00, a Brentford to Scunthorpe waste train, has only passed this way twice since December.
Having spent £280m on the track upgrade does he think they should not use it at night because he lives nearby?
Network Rail can run what trains when they like and by far the vast majority of the people in the district accept that fact without moaning.
It was a known fact that freight trains were going to be rerouted this way when the plot where your house stands was a field full of Sam Frier’s sheep munching grass. Did not your estate agent tell you?
To put it simply, you have now got to like it, lump it or move out because you do not own exclusivity to sounds etc near your home. Incidentally, when all freight is rerouted there will be up to 30 a day.
As for Roy Mead’s (no relation) calculations they are flawed because firstly diverted trains will be passing for 22 hours and secondly he overestimates times for each train.
There will be 103 trains across Woolram Wygate in this time which equates to 4.68 trains per hour, not 6.44. Ten trains listed are Peterborough-Spalding ones.
Having accurately timed trains at Hawthorn Bank, the average times are no more than three minutes, so therefore barriers at Park Road and Woolram Wygate will be closed for 14 minutes in the hour on average and not 27 minutes as he says.
I could comment on the inefficiencies of our emergency services which means their reaction times would be better and they would be over the crossing before being held up by a train if they were more efficient.
Do not listen to the likes of Coun Porter because this is just another scaremongering exercise by the Tories to deflect our minds away from the deficiencies of his party nationally and locally before the May elections. They are desperate to get every vote they can because they are running scared of the Labour party and UKIP, the latter who are taking seats away from them.
Incidentally, it was his party’s government department who told the train operators to stop putting all rail passengers on buses and use diversionary routes like ours through Spalding so passengers got what they paid for and not a ride on slow bumpy noisy swaying buses lurching through the countryside taking three or four times longer.
David Mead
Hawthorn Bank
Spalding
