Mr Turtle (Letters, July 7) is right to say our railway does not have suitable equipment to get a lot of bikes back from Brighton to London and elsewhere.
However, the answer already exists. A construction sometimes called the Autorack, it is a covered freight car about 89 feet long, between 17 and 20 feet high and about 11 feet wide, and it is designed to transport cars, vans and pick-up trucks across large distances, often in two or three "layers", one above the other.
UK train companies could easily buy a train of about 80 to 120 of these cars from the US which should swallow up all the bikes involved in the London to Brighton bike ride.
Unfortunately, it is also a heavy train, so purchasing it would also entail going to General Electric to buy a pair of engines called AC4400s which could handle its weight on the once-a-year basis it would be needed.
You would also have to knock down and rebuild every bridge, tunnel and station platform from here to London to allow for the increased clearance it would need.
But I'm sure the bike riding community would agree this would be worthwhile.
The only slight downside would be that you would have to charge each rider about £5,000 a ticket to cover this outlay.
-M Boyask, Hove
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