Paying passengers should have priority

10:12am Thursday 28th August 2008

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I HAVE had experiences similar to those of David Delaney (Readers Times August 14) travelling through Newport on average about once a week, usually to Reading for Heathrow or Gatwick or to London and occasionally to Bristol Temple Meads for Bristol Airport.

However, I have the impression that the source of the problems in catching connections does not lie with the train companies but with the station management at Newport.

The following is an example. On August 11, I took the 7.53 train from Leominster to connect at Newport with the 9.15 train to Bristol Temple Meads. On arrival at Newport, I found this train shown as due to depart from platform 4 and recorded announcements to this effect continued while the train was clearly drawing into platform 3, presumably having been diverted there for operational reasons.

Platform 3 can be reached from platform 4 only over a footbridge. On account of my age and encumbered by a suitcase I could not run with the rest of the waiting passengers but, fortunately, managed to attract the attention of a staff member on platform 4 who used his mobile telephone to alert a colleague on platform 3 and kindly carried my suitcase across the footbridge. Without this lucky coincidence, I would have missed my connection.

All my experiences at Newport Station suggest that the station management’s priority is operational convenience instead of the needs of passengers changing trains. Surely, we the paying passengers should have priority!

RUPERT BLUM, Stoke Prior, Hereford.