• It is not surprising the board of Railtrack have rejected Mr Corbett's offer of resignation: if he were to go they would be bound to follow. He should go, and they should follow: it is not the case that Mr Corbett is the best man to solve Railtrack's problems - the people who will solve the problem are the hundreds of engineers and workers who have been prevented from doing so by the structure of contracts that Railtrack's board has entered into.
Michael Fort
Huddersfield

• Corbett thinks Railtrack should stop paying him. Everyone else thinks he should stay and sort out the mess: let him stay and work for nothing till the rails are safe.
Tim Evans
London

• Your leader (October 19) speaks of a need to build travellers' confidence. The first step to restoring the confidence of this particular rail traveller would be a government announcement that dividend payments to Railtrack shareholders will automatically be suspended for a minimum of five years after any major railway accident in which track or signal failure is implicated.
Peter Whincup
London

• You are right to conclude that the days of British Rail were not a golden age. Perhaps we ought to admit that we get the railway we are prepared to pay for. There are four strands to achieving a first-class rail network: punctuality, price, reliability, and safety. Since 1995, politicians and the media have stressed the first two, overlooking the Japanese experience that a reliable railway is also a safe one. But reliability will cost money and the lowest cost mentality still dominates railway thinking.
Robert Gifford
Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety
robert.gifford@pacts.org.uk

• You cite the 1988 rail crash as an example of a disaster under a nationalised system. Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979 and private contractors were already widely used.
Alan Tyson
Chester

• As a continental European passing through, I am amazed by the anti-public sector accent of New Labour, even where economic competition does not follow privatisation. The last time I travelled the 35-mile journey from London to Stansted Airport, I paid £12 to a semi-monopolistic privately owned train operator: one-third of my fare for a 800-mile flight to Italy with a competitive low-cost airline. The high-speed TGV between Paris and Lyon, which is highly-profitable for its French state operator, comfortably and safely covers a 270-mile distance for £29: the same price of a bumpy 110-mile return journey from Cambridge to London.
Carlo Ratti
University of Cambridge