A couple of brilliant flashes and it’s gone but I still recall the old Victorian Railways slogan: “Be a brain, go by train.”

I’ve some question, however, to the reasoning by train drivers suggesting it’s the new concrete sleepers that are causing “mudholes” below tracks (The Border Mail, August 10).

Bemusing, is that old laid concrete sleepers elsewhere don’t seem to be doing the same.

Logic would have it that timber sleepers, new or old, have more “bounce” and less integrity, so what’s causing the wallows?

Fresh ballast moves until it’s compacted.

Rain and earth make mud, oozing to the surface under pressure.

New foundations are always subject to consolidation, no doubt part of Australian Rail’s proposed bedding down maintenance.

There’s no question safety is a prime consideration but let’s hope the red flag is not raised at every whim to stifle a vital, intercapital rail link.

Concrete sleepers causing mudholes? What a lot of rot.

The efficiency of European, American and Japanese high speed rail systems is proof of concrete spars.

Over there, of course, they have no redgum forests subject to the controversy of logging.

Concrete is forever. River redgums are finite.

I just wonder why those railwaymen have taken an ecologically sensitive, political and complex land and forestry management stance in what alludes to be a push for wooden sleepers.

— BERNIE KOKOT,

Howlong