SIR — I write as a member of the West Somerset Railway Association in response to the comments from Robin White re the association's recent AGM (Free Press July 25). I find it ironic that Ms White accuses the association trustees of losing their way due to internal strife. Most of this internal strife has been brought about largely as a result of a concerted campaign of undermining of all that the association attempts to do in its support of the railway by the WSR PLC and its supporters in recent years. As for the trustees being the guardians of 'process', no-one would argue with that concept. I feel that the WSRA have acted with far more fairness and transparency in the recent dispute with the WSR PLC over the proposed sale of the railway freehold from Somerset County Council. The clear dissent spoken of with regard to the AGM is hardly surprising given that 95 per cent of the estimated people present were 'stooges' of the recently formed 'alternative support group' whose members had deliberately applied for association membership leading up to the AGM with the sole intent of attending the meeting to disrupt and influence the proceedings for their preferred outcomes ie the installation of several its members onto the WSRA board of trustees. As for the criticism of the use by the chairman of proxy votes, here is a clear case of the 'kettle calling the pot black'. Over a period of at least the last 20 years, I have witnessed myself as a PLC shareholder, various PLC chairmen chairing company AGMs knowing full well that, should they need them, they have a wadge of proxy votes sent in by a large number of the PLC's approximately 8,000 shareholders (average attendance at an PLC AGM would be no more than 150 shareholders). Thus any controversial decisions requiring to be made could be easily carried by the chairman calling for a 'poll' vote and using his proxy votes in the event that a show of hands from the floor of the meeting did not bring about the outcome desired by the board of directors. This is exactly what Ms White is reprimanding the association for doing and claiming that it is a cause of the apparent dissent. A chairman is quite within his right, in accordance with the organisation's constitution, to use properly submitted proxy votes as he sees fit. It would not be unreasonable to expect a chairman to have in his possession anything between 500 and 1,000 proxy votes on average, depending on the degree of controversy over decisions being made at an AGM (the association has approximately 4,000 members). Sadly there is a great deal more to this whole unhappy saga of increasingly acrimonious dispute between the two major organisations of the West Somerset Railway than time or space permits me to go into here. Suffice to say the arguments are far from straight forward and the detail immense. Paul Johnson, Member, West Somerset Railway Association.