Railfuture has campaigned for 35 years to improve and expand Britain’s rail network. We welcome John Maden’s support for two of our core aims: electrifying busy lines and reopening closed lines for which there is enough demand (April 25). Indeed, Railfuture was formed by the 1978 merger of two organisations founded in the 1960s to oppose Beeching rail closures.

John proposes reopening former lines to Witney and Princes Risborough. It will therefore interest him that Witney Oxford Transport (witneyoxford transport.wordpress.com/) campaigns for a rapid transit system using the trackbed of the former Witney Railway.

In 2015, trains will link Oxford and Princes Risborough again when Chiltern Railways opens its new Marylebone-Bicester-Oxford Parkway service.

Its 90mph trains will be quicker than the line through Thame and Wheatley which was closed in 1963.

The Kennington-Cowley part of the Oxford- Risborough line survives as the Mini factory’s freight link.

Oxfordshire County Council wants an Oxford-Littlemore -Cowley passenger service on that line.

John also writes lightly of “viaducts and tunnels to be reinstated”.

Between Cowley and Wheatley is Horspath Tunnel, which, since the 1980s, has been skilfully altered to make a successful bat hibernaculum.

All bats are protected. It would be very hard to reopen a railway through a tunnel which bats have had to themselves for 50 years.

Diverting the line to avoid Horspath Tunnel would scar the local landscape and cost many millions of pounds. Railfuture therefore concentrates on Witney and Cowley as the two most achievable rail reopenings in Oxfordshire.

HUGH JAEGER, Media officer, Railfuture Thames Valley Branch, Park Close, Oxford