I asked Rob Donald (a past head of Centro) when I saw him at the election hustings in Stourbridge on April 22 about his failure to get trams or trains on the line (or, to have it turned into a road!).

He seemed uncomfortable with my questioning and took the earliest opportunity to escape when I was still trying to pin him down!

Also present, but on the platform was Peter Lowe, Dudley's leader on the Integrated Transport Authority who is the Labour candidate for Stourbridge constituency. He would not speak to me but accepted my written question that I had no opportunity to ask.

Peter is the person most responsible for putting the equivalence of the Stourbridge Shuttle (I expect it to be called the Dudley Shuttle) on the one mile of the Black Country inter-city Line from Stourbridge to Walsall and then onto Lichfield and Burton. One track is for the shuttle service and the other is the test track, according to press reports.

Peter, on two or three occasions at the hustings was loud and proud in stating that he was born in Stourbridge and has put Stourbridge first, middle and last throughout his political life.

Yet, for all of his life, he has lived in a town with one half of its rail services out of action thanks to his political colleagues' action in the 1960s to close (only some mothballed) about 100 miles of urban rail lines in Birmingham and the Black Country.

For all Peter's fine record of political action, it has not included one iota of even tacit support for getting his local rail line re-opened. In fact, as leader, his decision now condemns the line to further inaction, rusting lines and more jungle taking over - apart from the one mile shuttle tram and test track that will have shiny new lines put down.

What do Rob and Peter and your other readers think of this? Can we have their response, please?

Tim Weller Halesowen.