REGARDING Councillor Birtwistle's comments on Manchester Road railway station, it surely cannot be denied that the pathetic facilities at the station need a huge improvement if the station is to become an attractive and welcoming gateway to Burnley.

Currently about five to six hundred passengers use the station daily, and that's despite the poor, almost total lack of facilities.

There is so much scope for massive improvement, which would really encourage travellers to use it.

What visitors think of the station at present can only be imagined.

But we must be accurate in claims about the benefits.

It is said that Burnley to Manchester services could be timed at 38 minutes, but this is totally unrealistic at a practical level, even with the proposed reinstated Todmorden curve.

This is partly because of pathing difficulties (arranging timings on the busy Todmorden-Manchester line), partly because it would be desirable to make stops at Todmorden and Rochdale (and possibly Littleborough) but mainly because of necessary speed restrictions on the heavily engineered line between Burnley and Todmorden.

It is possible that Network Rail might find some justification for a limited relaxation of current limits but a timing of less than 46 minutes to/from Manchester, with two stops, is unrealistic, so we must be careful to be accurate in all claims about the undoubted huge benefit of the proposals.

DAVID ATKINSON, Riddings Avenue, Worsthorne, Burnley