REGARDING your report (LET, July 17) on a Dalesrail ramblers train being cancelled due to a coal train derailment at Dent Head on the Settle-Carlisle railway.

I would like to enlighten those ramblers whose day's enjoyment of the Dales was spoilt by this mishap and also to the farmers around Dentdale whose livelihood depends on the fields and streams adjacent to the line, which are now polluted with 800 tons of rock spilt from the train.

The train was travelling from Scotland to Drax Power Station as you stated, but it would not be carrying Scottish coal as their pits were closed by the last administration, while the present government is pondering on the future of the remaining 25 pits left working in Britain.

One may ask where this coal originated before being tipped into Dentdale. Well, it's cheap imported coal shipped into a Scots port and could have come from Eastern Europe, Poland or Russia, where miners are still waiting for last year's wages, or from Colombia, where school-age face workers, hooked on cocaine to take their minds off hazards such as respiratory disease or roof falls, dig the stuff that's fuelling some of our power stations and making 'fat cats' fatter.

Bear that in mind next time you look at your bill with its 'standing charge' and spare a thought for the 10-year-old in Colombia, to whom the terms 'health and safety' and 'drug czar' don't mean a thing.

J LEADLEY, Sandhill Street,

Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.