I AM writing in response to Anthony Brown’s letter, (Guardian, March 12,) and to some of the comments posted online following up on the letter.

The reason for some of the peak time train services starting or terminating at Stockport is due to Virgin Trains, in 2008, introducing an hourly Manchester-Wilmslow-London service, which reduced the number of paths for local trains.

This means there is currently insufficient capacity to run a half-hourly service from Knutsford to Manchester at peak times.

Wilmslow gained and Knutsford lost out, and the move to get an hourly Wilmslow-London train was supported by our MP George Osborne.

In December 2016 the Ordsall Chord together with platforms 15 and 16 at Piccadilly should open, meaning there should be capacity to introduce extra services in and out of Manchester Piccadilly.

Further to that, Network Rail has a potential plan for between April 2019 and March 2024 to build a rail link from Manchester Airport to Altrincham and to the Chester line.

This means that from December 2016 we could have a half-hourly service from Knutsford to Manchester, and hopefully within the next 10 years we could have even more and faster services to Manchester, which wouldn’t need to go via Stockport.

Therefore it is important to note these are potential proposals at present and need actively backing to ensure they happen.

JEN D’ANGELO Knutsford