Station lights

SIR - RE: R Hogg's comments regarding station lighting (letters, Herts Advertiser July 2).

I too have noticed that FCC leave a large percentage of St Albans station lights on all day, even in bright sunlight. This is particularly galling considering that they have just raised the minimum weekday railcard spend to �13, and suggests that they don't mind wasting the money we pay them. I know it's only a relatively small amount, but suggests sloppy management and a complete disregard for energy efficiency and environmental matters. Perhaps they need reminding that automatic dusk to dawn photocell controls are inexpensive and commonplace, and would pay for themselves many times over in this particular case.

I'm not particularly impressed with other aspects of the St Albans station refurbishment, and in fact some parts look worse than they did before. The whole thing appears to have been done on the cheap, especially the corrugated metal lift shafts, which would look at home in an industrial estate, rather than the main railway station in a supposedly up-market town. We've still got peeling varnish, rotten woodwork and cables and ducts everywhere; the walkway now looks rather like a service tunnel in a chemical processing plant with cable trunking criss-crossing everywhere.

Perhaps it would be worth writing directly to FCC regarding the lighting issue - after all, it worked for me with St Pancras International, where the station lighting also used to be on all day. After my letter they responded positively, and now the lighting is automatically controlled and mostly off by day. Whether it will work with FCC would be another matter, but it would be worth a try.

ROBERT COWARD

Jersey Farm

St Albans