ON November 28 you published a story about plans for opencast mining at Cutacre.
The article expressed the fears of councillors and others about the amount of road vehicles such an operation might create and went on to say that Railtrack is not able to start work on a rail link until 2004.
It is not that Railtrack does not want to provide a rail link to the site. It is simply that Railtrack does not have the resources in terms of skilled manpower to do the necessary work at present.
There is a national skills shortage which is particularly acute in the area of signal engineering.
All such engineers employed by Railtrack are working on major schemes such as the introduction of TPWS -- the train protection warning system that will stop or significantly slow down a train in the event of it going through a red signal -- as well as general signal maintenance and renewal.
Tough deadlines have been set by which time we must have the TPWS system in place -- and we are determined to meet those deadlines.
The unfortunate consequence for other schemes such as Cutacre is that TPWS and other safety-related issues take precedence.
Keith Lumley
Media Relations Manager
Railtrack North West
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