Why can't the government pick someone who actually knows something about what he or she is meant to be in charge of?  Alistair Darling knows as much about railways as I do about cosmetic surgery which isn't a lot!  Each successive government for the last 50 years has been trying to cut Cornwall off the rail network altogether by either scaling down services or threatening to close lines.  Fortunately, they haven't succeeded, so far.  I travelled on the St Ives branch just before Christmas and it was surprising the number of passengers that used the line even at that time of year.  The train even had two carriages!  The Newquay line whilst it is a beautiful and very scenic line, only has 3 or 4 trains a day between Monday and Saturday in the winter and none on a Sunday and hardly a single passenger uses these trains.  How do you market a line like Newquay to Par when hardly anyone uses it or likely to use it because they prefer the comforts of their cars?

To be honest, the best and most profitable route to Newquay would have been the line from Chacewater via St Agnes and Perranporth which was closed in 1963.  Had it survived another til around August 1968, it most probably would still be open today and it would have been known as the Truro to Newquay line.  It would have served more tourist destinations (Perranporth even boasted two stations!) than the just about open Par to Newquay line and I reckon would still be making a profit.  The reason?  You would still have your school trains, one or two each way in the morning, there would be trains for shoppers and because it would have served tourist destinations, the trains would most probably have been full in the summer but thanks to Dr Beeching and chums, none of that will ever happen.  I think its time for the government to make it compulsory for all supposedly 'through' trains to run to Penzance thus increasing the traffic in Cornwall (I read a timetable last year and there were 11 trains between Penzance and Plymouth and 30 from Plymouth upwards.  How crazy is that?).  Its also time to put a lot of the freight back on the railways.  When they were going to re-open the old clay line to Wenfordbridge, it was reckoned that one train would remove 150 lorries from the road!  We need to make the most of the railways we have down here and utilise all of them more fully.  Stop building houses and roads Mr Brown and invest in the best solution to all your traffic problems, RAILWAYS.  PS Cut the fare prices while yer at it please!