Sir –You published a letter from me (June 11) June refuting what you had said in your paper the week before under the banner front page headline Ten Years of Misery about building the HS2 railway.

My letter was intended to reassure your readers that the ‘ten years of misery’ was a serious exaggeration. In your issue of June 18 you published two letters, prompted by mine, which rather missed the point. Mr Whitty is wrong. Modern trains, however heavy, do not cause vibration. As they pass along the line, their pressure on the track is constant.

He says that modern trains are ‘longer and heavier’ than before. True. But as a modern wagon carrying 40 tonnes causes no vibration, a longer train of however many such wagons also causes no vibration.

Mr Adams also has a few things wrong. Now that all railway lines have welded joints, there is none of the noise or vibration formerly caused by ‘wheels clattering on the track’.

His last paragraph about ‘mitigating the vibration’ can be safely ignored as there will be no vibration. “Ten years of misery” remains seriously wrong.

Dr Martin Barnes
Kirtlington