MR Stowell's letter in the Times (April 8) about a business case for the re-opening of the Bere Alston/Tavistock railway makes two statements that cannot go unchallenged.

He says that the subsidy for the Gunnislake-Plymouth line is 'unsustainable'. Presumably he therefore would back the closure of that line. Hopefully, Mr Stowell has a car, perhaps he will offer lifts into Plymouth to people without a car. Perhaps he will offer jobs to those who depend on the train to get to work in Plymouth.

He also says that the houses around the new Tavistock station are 'unwanted and unnecessary'. Hopefully, Mr Stowell is well housed, as I am, but not everybody is. My two children (aged 30 and 28) were born and educated here but have no chance of getting a first foot on the housing ladder.

The supply and demand for housing leads to prices that are unaffordable on local wages. Those houses are urgently wanted and very necessary.

My children maintain contact with their peers from school and their experience is not unusual. Some of their friends have managed to get housing but the mortgage payments or rent absorb unsustainable, to use Mr Stowell's word, amounts of their wages. Again a greater housing supply is needed.

I'm getting to a stage of my life where I need younger workers to join the local workforce and provide all the services upon which I will increasingly depend. Those young people need housing and transport. Providing those is not altruism, it is self-interest from us older, car owning, well housed residents.

If a spin off of concentrating development as proposed in the Kilbride scheme is an environmentally sustainable transport link, well played, West Devon.

Ray Bentley

Chapel Street

Bere Alston

WHAT is it that people do not like about Tavistock? Last October we had a bunch of parish councillors from Calstock saying that if the line is reinstated to Tavistock we should only be allowed a shuttle service to Bere Alston and Tavistock passengers must change in order to get out to Plymouth.

Now we have Mr Stowell from Bere Alston (Letters April 8) informing us that we should not have a railway at all! Obviously they are entitled to their opinions, however, may I respectively suggest that the subject it is really noting to do with them?

I understand (although I'm happy to be corrected) that this line is to be built by Messrs Kilbride on the back of permission to build 750 new homes and due to Government policy, that most of these are going ahead anyway. If this is so and the line is to be built at Kilbride's cost, we may well have it.

Ann Keelan (at least she is from Tavistock) may have a point over the amount of use initially, however, this project, together with the announcement that a company wants to start a regular service from Okehampton to Exeter means that this is not now just about Tavistock, but about the benefit to the West Country as a whole.

With both ends in operation there really is no reason why the gap between Tavistock and Okehampton should not be reinstated, even is it is initially a single line with passing loops - many say this should never have been closed in the first place.

As has been pointed out before, the line at Dawlish is in need of constant attention and may one day fail altogether, so unless there is a viable alternative, the West may well find itself cut off from the rest of the country.

Paul Mercer

Ivy Cottage

Peter Tavy

CORRESPONDENTS Ann Keelan and Geoffrey Stowell could be right that there is no business sense in spending £18-million merely to restore the railway from Bere Alston to Tavistock. But several points are being missed:

1. That particular option is currently tied in with Kilbride being given consent to build 750 houses. However, those houses are the result of a Central Government mandate and are going to be built, with or without the railway. So, we might as well have the railway.

2. Recent correspondence has been to encourage restoration of the whole line from Exeter to Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock, which should never have been cut in the first place, not just the Bere Alston link, though this would add encouragement to completing the rest of the line.

3. Are these correspondents saying that if Dr Beeching had not cut the LSWR main line they would be campaigning to have it removed in the interests of isolating Tavistock and Okehampton?

4. Restoration of the main line would put Tavistock back on the map, and house prices would increase rather than decrease.

5. There would be little noise. Trains pass by quite rapidly and there would only be a few each day. Compare that with the constant noise of road traffic. I live near a main road and adjacent to the railway track. I know which I would prefer.

Terence Scarborough

1 Uplands

Tavistock