Re your article on travel etiquette (The ultimate guide to travel etiquette: how to handle 36 tricky situations, from manspreaders to smelly armpits, 4 August), it’s totally wrong to advise people not to give up seats for a woman any more. Women could be menstruating, in the first trimester of pregnancy (the most exhausting time, and not one you advertise with badges saying “Baby on board”), perimenopausal, menopausal or have endometriosis (excruciating pain). Women live with a level of pain and discomfort as routine, for much of their lives. Yes, of course men can be suffering with specific ailments at specific times, but it is not part and parcel of being a man. Gentlemen, please just do it.
Helen Walker
London

To your list of dubious travel behaviours, I’d like to add constant sniffing and its more guttural and nauseating relation, snorting. It seems that handkerchiefs, tissues and even the concept of blowing your nose have gone out of fashion. I am frequently nauseated by this on planes and trains, and if I don’t have headphones with me I have to resort to blocking my ears. I have not yet had the courage to speak to a culprit (although I have often been tempted to pass them a tissue).
Judith Milburn
Hartlepool, County Durham

I enjoyed your guide to travel etiquette. It was very sensible and reflective of our modern society. I had to smile at the guidance for offering your seat to elderly people – as a man in my mid-50s who is (happily) fit and healthy, I always have to remind myself that people offering me a seat aren’t commenting on my physical state, they are just being kind to a stranger.

Given the increasing incidence of harassment on public transport, particularly of women, it might be helpful to give some guidance as to what to do if you see someone being harassed – that’s a tricky balance of ensuring the safety of yourself and those around you, but it is (sadly) a reflection of the times.

However, you didn’t go into enough detail about one of my biggest bugbears – people who insist on keeping their backpacks on on crowded buses and tubes where standing space is at a premium. It’s frustrating, and occasionally very problematic, when people aren’t aware that the space they’re taking up by keeping the backpack on is much larger than their unencumbered body. As they move or turn they bump into whatever you’re holding, and it reduces the opportunity for others to join the service.

It’s a simple rule: take the backpack off and have it at your feet – always – to avoid encroaching on other people’s personal space and to free up space for others. Or maybe my middle-aged grumpiness is just getting the better of me on this one.
Peter Antolik
London

Recently, after a three day-visit to London, I returned home to Devon and jokingly complained that Londoners constantly made me feel old. Every journey I made on public transport, someone offered me a seat. On two occasions a woman offered me a helping hand as I descended the stairs on a bus. I am a six-foot, healthy 80-year-old and can easily manage to stand for a short journey but, as my wife pointed out, it is much nicer to smile and accept the offers. On another bus, a woman offered to move so that my wife and I could sit together. In conclusion, I felt I should point out that Londoners, in my experience, do not really need much of your advice. They already have an embarrassment of politeness riches and made me feel much happier about the human race.
Paul Wesley
Totnes, Devon

Rail passengers are facing a second day of travel disruption across parts of north-west England, after a power failure hit the signalling centre controlling the railway in the region.

The power failure, which occurred shortly before 2pm on Thursday, triggered widespread cancellations and delays to services including CrossCountry and London Northwestern Railway.

Operators whose services continued to be affected on Friday morning were Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, Northern, TransPennine Express (TPE) and Transport for Wales.

National Rail said this morning that although trains are now able to operate, there could be delays until noon as several trains and crew are in the wrong locations for the start of service today.

“This means that some trains are still expected to be affected this morning. Trains across the Greater Manchester area and north-west of England may still be cancelled in full or revised to only run for part of their normal journey until service is able to fully recover,” it said.

Northern Rail has advised passengers not to travel before 10am today. TPE has told its passengers should prepare for disruption before midday today, with delays and cancellations to be expected.

Greater Manchester, the Midlands and north-west England were hit the hardest by the rail disruption, with thousands of passengers unable to complete their journeys.

The facility in Manchester that experienced the outage was one of 12 operating centres designed to eventually manage the entire British rail network, Network Rail said when it opened in 2014.

A wartime bomb was also discovered near the railway between Tamworth and Burton-on-Trent, which deepened disruption on Thursday, National Rail said.

Chris Wright, Network Rail’s north-west route director, said: “I’d like to thank passengers for their patience after yesterday’s power outage and the disruption it caused across the north-west.

“Our engineers worked through the night to restore signalling systems and recover the railway, and I’m pleased that most services are now running this morning.

“While some passengers may still experience disruption, we’re continuing to work closely with train operators to return services to normal as quickly as possible. Anyone planning to travel this morning should continue to check before they travel for the latest information.”

Andy Bowes-Roden, deputy editor at Modern Railways magazine, told BBC Radio 5 Live there would be “quite a lot of disruption this morning easing throughout the day”.

“Hopefully by rush hour the service will be back to normal, but it won’t be until tomorrow morning that this will be sorted,” he said. “As rail passengers, we are lucky. We have protections and the railways are obliged to get us where they promise to get us. But there will be an awful lot of refunds.”