Sir:- The great majority of passengers will agree that LNER's compulsory seat reservation policy is not only customer-unfriendly, but also likely to damage their bottom line (as evidenced by the letters in RAIL 934). However no-one seems to have noticed that LNER's new 2022 timetable [now postponed to 2023 - Ed] - under consultation - is pretty customer-unfriendly as well, particularly to those who use its longest service - the Inverness to London Highland Chieftain.

Unlike our cousins in Aberdeen we receive but one service a day. The proposed timetable increases an already 8-hour journey by no less than 16 minutes UP (and a mere 7 minutes DOWN). Extra stops are included, all of them unlikely to be required by passengers starting from Inverness. It looks very much as though the extra stations south of Berwick are there to satisfy some box-ticking exercise at the cost of an extra 16 minutes for the company's premier service. And all this is announced in promotional material full of "faster journey" words. Not up here it ain't.

Yours - Mike Lunan