WILL someone inform Mr R F Cross, of the Freight Transport Association (Letters, February 11), who keeps taking my name in vain, that two and two do not make five.

He is trying to justify heavy lorries cluttering the roads to the loss of the goods trains, but anyone who can add up will realise that one goods train is equal to at least 10 lorries, with no impedance to road users.

Before the Thatcher era decimated coal and steel, almost all heavy goods were transported by rail, with the little Scammel workhorse trucks making road deliveries from the rail depots.

Now all is dependent on the key motorways being kept open and accident-free.

But for Dr Beeching deliberately bringing the railway to its knees in the 1960s, there would have been much fairer competition for the transport of goods.

FRANCIS CROSS, Royds Street, Accrington.

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