Rail chief salutes road
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BOB REID, British Rail's chairman, freely admits that hauliers and coach operators "continue to offer increasingly attractive and dependable services" and "are always ready to take away our customers." The miners' strike has cost the railways £100m in lost revenue and railwayman who have renounced the much-vaunted customer-care policy have contributed to it.
The hauliers and their drivers who have so bravely run the gauntlet of dangerous mobs to keep power stations and steel works operational deserve every penny they have earned. Alas, it is too much to hope that their fortitude will be remembered. With the ending of the emergency they will once again become objects of abuse by the public whom they have courageously served.
Meanwhile, the railways are hoping that another good harvest will yield more than 350,000 tonnes of grain traffic this year, compared with 76,000 tonnes in 1981. This, however, will do little to redress the disastrous loss in minerals.