'Micro brewers are the best thing to happen to British brewing' - Your Letters: February 15

Sad message from a friend, on holiday in Keswick. He had just drunk his last pint of Jennings, a fate shared by drinkers of Banks’s Mild and other cask beers of Carlsberg Marston. This situation is almost a facsimile of the seventies as Carlsberg close breweries, restrict choice and concentrate production at the Northampton keg factory.

In 1971 I did a cycling tour of Norfolk where I discovered I could drink anything I liked providing it was the gas ridden belly wash manufactured by Watneys. Competition, choice and quality completely wiped out. Courage, Whitbread, Allied and others were doing exactly the same in other parts of the country.

Thankfully the situation is not the same as it was back then. We now have the old established family brewers and hundreds of micro brewers. The micro brewers are the best thing to happen to British brewing since the discovery of the hop. They have driven choice, quality and innovation.

Why now do we have such a magnificent alternative to the likes of Carlsberg? Fifty years ago it was unthinkable for anyone to set up business as a brewer. Then, in 1971, Camra was formed specifically to save cask beer (real ale) and what was left of the independent brewers.

Camra gave drinkers a chance to rebel against the national domination of the big brewers.

Cask ale became an expanding market and in response people actually started to set up business as brewers again. Around 3,000 truly independent breweries eventually emerged producing a huge range of beers.

It is fair to say that Camra has immensely improved the British brewing industry for the better.

Keith Watkins, Walsall Camra

TRAIN TALK WAS ON WRONG LINE

Letters that were published on 20 and 23 January referred to the West Coast Main Line running through Wolverhampton. It does not.

The railway line to Birmingham New Street and thence to Wolverhampton, diverges from it just after leaving Rugby.

And the line from the latter does not rejoin it until Queensville Junction, about a mile from Stafford.

The two signal boxes mentioned are also on different lines.

Tipton is on the Stour Valley line while Portobello Junction lies on the old Grand Junction line via Bescot, at which the connection to Wolverhampton diverges.

The line from Wolverhampton to Stafford rejoins the Grand Junction route at Bushbury Junction.

The photograph of the bus and caption to it of 3 February pose something of a puzzle. The caption states that the bus was being tried out by the Wolverhampton Corporation to replace the town's trolley vehicles. The bus is No.17, which was the service to Bridgnorth?

However, the bus appears to be in the livery of the Birmingham City Corporation and trolley buses from Wolverhampton in the Bridgnorth direction only ran as far as Compton.

Trevor Matthews, Claverley

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