SIR – I write in response to Paul Johnson's letter in which he suggested that 95 per cent of the persons present at the WSRA AGM were stooges of the recently formed alternative support group (Free Press August 1). This is entirely wrong. I would have more respect for Mr Johnson's views had he in fact been at the AGM, which he was not. I am neither a member of the members' action group nor a stooge of anyone, as anyone who knows me will attest. Rather I am a member of an Association whose trustees are now completely disconnected and isolated from the working members of the railway. Unlike Mr Johnson, I was at the meeting and I can assure him and your readers that those in attendance were not 'recently joined stooges' but rather highly concerned association members, mostly of many years' standing, many of who have contacted me in past days to say how demeaned they feel by Mr Johnson's comments. There is a strongly expressed view that Mr Johnson is himself a stooge of the trustees, put up to write a letter to you. It seems very telling that the trustees have had to resort to someone who was not at the meeting, given that after the walkout only a handful of the over 200 members who originally attended were left in the hall. As for West Somerset Railway plc AGMs and the use of proxy votes, I am not aware of any example in recent times where the plc faced such a 'disconnect' between the working and remote shareholders as the WSRA trustees now do with WSRA members. The difficulties between the parts of the railway are complex and require goodwill to solve. The present WSRA trustees are now, themselves, part of the problem and we need them to move aside to allow others to solve the problems with goodwill. I urge all WSRA members who can to attend the resumed WSRA AGM, whenever that might be. I note that it is now a fortnight since the unprecedented walk-out which caused the WSRA AGM to be adjourned, and there has been no public comment, nor news of the arrangements for the resumed AGM, from the present trustees. Are they hiding? Robin White, Life Member, West Somerset Railway Association.