I'm a commuter, get me out of here! (The Guardian)
I'm a commuter, get me out of here
Overcrowded, overpriced and underserviced: conditions on our trains are igniting increasing anger and protest among passengers around the country. But are services really that bad? We took a ride on seven commuter trips
Liverpool to Norwich, via Manchester
Monday morning beneath the elaborate Victorian wrought-iron arches of Warrington Central station. The train, a vivid lime colour, pulls in to platform 1 on time at 8.16am, and about 80 people surge on to a service that already has no empty seats.
This 20-minute leg of the Liverpool-Norwich train service to Manchester is so regularly overcrowded that it has given birth to the Warrington Rail Users Group - just one example of a growing fight-back mood among passengers on the rail lines with the worst conditions. This train rage erupted into rebellion last month when Somerset and Wiltshire commuters, fed up with being packed into shortened trains, staged a fares strike against First Great Western. The head of railways at the Department for Transport helped fuel such anger when he told a parliamentary committee that at peak travel times, passengers should accept that they might have to stand for up to half an hour.
As we pull out of Warrington, around a dozen people huddle by the doors in each of the four Central Trains carriages. Another 10 people are crowded in the aisle amid the display of reserved tickets above the seats. The temperature in the carriage is oppressively warm. "Not in service, please alight," blinks the electronic sign at the end of carriage A, confusingly.
Elaine Burgess, who works in human resources in Manchester, travels from Birchwood each day with her colleague, Jason Tarry. She is trying to stand and balance a cup of tea as the train lurches towards the city. "I have only been doing this journey for three months and I didn't have any expectations that it would be great," she says. "But the train is rubbish and there are never any spare seats."
Tarry says: "Every time we get the train we have to stand up. It is very rare for us to get a seat. The only good thing about this train is it is quicker than the stopping trains. The problem is we can't afford to park in Manchester."
On the outskirts of Manchester, the train shudders dramatically, flinging some of the standing passengers across the carriages. Most of the commuters pour out at Manchester Oxford Road and for the first time, there are seats. As the train approaches the station, the passenger announcement system crackles inaudibly. "We are none the wiser," laughs Tarry.
Michael Jones, a software engineer, has calculated that it costs him precisely the same to drive into Manchester as the return ticket. "Eighty pence in diesel and then another £6 to park, which is the same cost as the train journey," Jones says. "I used to live in Kent and commute into London and this journey is just as bad. But at least in Kent you got trains with 12 coaches." He mostly uses his car, as the train is so unreliable.
Mark Horrocks, a web designer from Warrington, has been using the 8.16am train service for seven years. "They don't have enough carriages on, but in the past six months it has got a bit better. I would say that six of the seven years have been bad. I have seen people fainting and having panic attacks because they are suffering from claustrophobia. Sometimes the toilet is blocked and the door is open and it stinks. It is not a great service and the most that you hope for is it is running on time." He thinks the train company should put on extra carriages and jettison them at Manchester when they are no longer needed. He is so frustrated by the journey, he is thinking of starting a blog.
There may be some comfort, though, for frazzled commuters. Central Trains says it will soon increase the number of carriages on the service.
Bedford to Sutton, via central London
Passengers on the former Thameslink route running into central London and southwards on to Wimbledon and Sutton had high hopes when the franchise changed hands in April last year. Surely the new company - First Capital Connect - had won the franchise because it was going to provide big improvements, more trains and better punctuality? Wrong, wrong and wrong.
The new company has put its stickers over the old Thameslink ones but they are the same, tired old trains, and there are fewer of them. The company says Thameslink had 86 of the special trains needed for the network but loaned out 12 to Southern Railways. Those are not due back until 2009, although First Capital Connect is hoping to get them earlier. "Capacity is our biggest single issue. It is completely unacceptable that people have to travel like this," said a spokeswoman. Passengers agree. "The overcrowding has got worse. It is simply ghastly. It makes me so angry," says Jeff Segal, who has just spent the journey to Herne Hill station squashed against a window.
Passengers often can't get on trains northbound from south London in the mornings or southbound from Blackfriars station in the evening. They thump on the windows and yell at squashed up people inside to squash up more. Passengers say First Capital Connect has cut some of the peak-hour trains from eight carriages to four, making the trains even more packed. The company says the trains had already been shortened by Thameslink. So that's that. "When they went for the franchise they specifically promised to increase the number of eight-carriage trains. And all I can see is that they have stuck FCC stickers over Thameslink ones," complains Tim Musgrave, a regular commuter to Blackfriars.
First Capital Connect blames the Department for Transport for drawing up the franchise badly and claims it is not allowed, under the terms of the franchise, to buy more rolling stock. The DfT acknowledges it gave the franchise to FCC because it offered good value for money to taxpayers, not necessarily the best service for customers. It is clear that the system, by selling to the highest bidder, gives little incentive to a train operator to lease more rolling stock - quite the contrary, as it wants to maximise profit.
The DfT cannot answer why FCC runs shorter trains in the rush hour or why its timetable does not have more peak-hour services. For that you are directed to the Office of the Rail Regulator. It in turn refers questions to Porterbrook Leasing, which owns the rolling stock. Everyone passes responsibility.
Still, the DfT says, First Capital Connect is investing money in CCTV cameras and "revenue protection" at stations. "We don't want bloody CCTV, we just want more seats," says Desmond Kelly, as he boards another crowded service.
Warminster to Cardiff Central, via Bath and Bristol
At the centre of last month's rail-fare rebellion over cattle-car conditions, which saw them proffering spoof "Worst Late Western" tickets to bemused inspectors, my fellow commuters on this particular day have a new and surprising beef - they can get a seat. It's not that they have a masochistic streak; rather, they suspect that the improvement has happened only because the media descended in force to witness the rebellion, and when the publicity has died down it will be back to standing room only.
"It's too good to be true," says Dave Jones, 32, an office worker who commutes into Bristol every day. "First Great Western have been embarrassed that the protest put them into the spotlight and for the moment they've got it sorted, but it won't last. Come back in a few weeks' time and you'll see."
The train we've caught is the 8.03am at Bath Spa station. It is five minutes late but we easily get a seat. Anna, the photographer, and I are disappointed that we ditched our cups of tea at Bath thinking it would be so full that we'd be spilling them over our fellow commuters.
We jump off at Keynsham, a stop short of Bristol, to see if the next train is any busier. This one, the 8.32am, is seven minutes late and more crowded. We squeeze into the corridor between two carriages with a lawyer, Rebecca Cobb, civil servant, Mark Billing, and nanny, Anna Rule, who is going to the zoo with her charges, two-year-old twins Lola and Louis. Louis certainly doesn't mind that the train is a little crowded - as a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan, he's just glad to be on a train.
Billing, who is perched on a flip-up seat, is another commuter who seems upset that the train isn't desperately cramped. "It just shows it can be done - but I'm not sure it will last."
The train arrives at Bristol Temple Meads a few minutes late but, in truth, it hasn't been too uncomfortable. Which seems only right for a journey that lasts less than 20 minutes and costs £6.50 return.
Gravesend to London Charing Cross, via Dartford
This isn't too bad, I think at first, when I get on Southeastern's 8.06am train at Dartford. The sun is shining, the fields are green ... and I get a seat. I don't even have to push a pregnant woman over to get it - I just stroll through the empty carriage. "This is great, it's not usually this quiet," says Colin Best, who commutes every day from Swanscombe in Kent to Lewisham in south London, where he works for the council. "But it won't last."
He's right. We hit Barnehurst, then Eltham, then Kidbrooke and the people keep on coming. A handful of stations later, and the carriage is packed. I get up to investigate. People tut as I squeeze past and I wonder if I'm going to spark some train rage. Cathy Judge, who works for a law firm in Westminster, got on at Falconwood and is resigned to standing, crammed up against the seats in the middle of the carriage, for her half-hour journey. "When the trains are like this, they're terrible," she says. "The fares keep going up and the service gets worse." (In January, Southeastern's fares rose by an above-average 6.3%.)
By the time we reach London Bridge station, we're jam-packed like livestock. Nobody talks and nobody looks at anyone else, even though our bodies are intertwined as if we were in some strange, fully clothed orgy. The doors open and people spill out like fish guts. A disabled man, who has been forced to stand for his journey, carefully gets off with his wheeled walker.
Kelly Flynn has been waiting at London Bridge since the train she was on was forced to stop there because someone was taken ill (perhaps not the train company's fault, but I choose to believe it is - maybe someone who felt faint and sick, as I do, after having their head wedged under somebody else's armpit for half an hour). Flynn commutes every day from New Eltham to central London, where she works for the National Patient Safety Agency, and has seen four packed trains come and go before the one I am on has enough space on it. "They've removed seats and loos on the trains so they can cram in more people, and they say this is what passengers want. But I don't. Nobody has ever asked me what I want." She adds (and here's a familiar theme): "And the ticket prices just keep on rising."
The relief of reclaimed personal space is short-lived - even more people get on at London Bridge. As we approach Charing Cross, condensation streams down the inside of the doors. There's a fug of hot breath and body heat. "This is hideous, isn't it," I say to a woman's armpit. "Hell," agrees the armpit.
London Euston to Crewe
As soon as the departure board flashes up the platform number, the waiting crowd swarms through the station, breaking into a run, desperate to get aboard the Virgin Trains service first. We heave our way through hot bodies, but we're too late - no seats are available."It's like a bleeding refugee camp in here," grumbles one sweating man. "And today's a good day." The train wobbles furiously. I feel seasick. Out of service, screams a sign taped to the toilet door. The next two loos have also malfunctioned, a handwritten sign informs us. Curled in a ball near by is Martin from Rugby. "It's cramped and stinky," he says. "We need some aromatic [sic]."
But then amid the misery I meet Richard Branson's biggest fan: "I've done this twice a week for eight years and it's infinitely better than it was - more seats, faster, cleaner. This is not bad", insists Barbara Stevens from Cumbria, who works in London. Chinwe, who is going to visit her parents in Glasgow and is relieved to have seats for her three kids, agrees that the service is good.
The manager's voice crackles over the speakers to inform us where we are, but the system's electronic screeching drowns him out.
Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh
If you are strap-hanging on train lines in England and value the remains of your sanity, look away now. It will do you no good to read about the record 88% satisfaction rates that Scottish rail commuters report, nor the £1.9bn, seven-year programme to introduce extra carriages, longer platforms and new rail lines across Scotland, or that train operators rarely breach their promise that no one should stand for more than 10 minutes. Even a recent BBC Radio Scotland phone-in on commuting struggled to find hair-raising stories. In fact, several callers bandied words such as "excellent" and "very comfortable".
This is not to say that all commuting in Scotland is bliss. But even at its worst it's more like a light singe, compared to the flame-roasted-on-a-spit kind of hell that many commuters in the south-east of England would recognise.
If local mythology were to be believed, one of Scotland's black spots is the Fife Circle line that links up commuter towns such as Gordon Brown's birthplace Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline and Inverkeithing in west Fife with Edinburgh. Yet Kirkcaldy commuters can choose between five trains within half an hour on the morning commuter run, and capacity has been increased by a third recently, so when we hop aboard the 7.30am from Kirkcaldy on a Friday, I find many travellers exuding an aura of sleepy calm as the train clatters sedately in the early morning sunlight across the Forth Bridge. Our carriage is two-thirds full. One man stands by the doors, but only to better enjoy a movie on his iPod. Oh, there is one flutter of rebelliousness in the otherwise empty corridor, from a cyclist who finds her bicycle-rack space blocked by another bike and the restraining strap broken.
There are some bad routes. Services into Glasgow Central can be tedious and, for some people boarding at Paisley Gilmore Street and Motherwell, standing can be routine. But the journey takes only 10 or 11 minutes, so the local public transport executive, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, neatly meets its "10-minute standing" target.
There are some justified complaints about reliability on the likes of the single line running from the outlying towns of Bathgate, Livingstone and Uphall to Edinburgh. Scottish ministers say the line will be "dualed" in 2007, but there are no signs of any shovels being lifted so far.
Birmingham to Edinburgh, via York
Boarding the 8.03am from Birmingham New Street to York on a Monday morning I am salivating at the thought of the horrors I am about to endure, courtesy of the less than universally beloved Virgin Trains. Would that have been too much to ask? Apparently so. Did it have to be so pleasant? So prompt? Typical! As we slide smoothly out of New Street at exactly three minutes past the hour, the words of a fellow passenger pretty much sum it up: "Hi, it's Sue, I'm on the train. No, no, it's fine. There's loads of room."
The route cuts a confident path through the heart of England, via Burton-on-Trent, Tamworth and Derby. Outside, bouncing streams overhung with brown winter trees speed past; inside, it looks like an advert for rail travel. Stress-free passengers conduct cordial conversations, classic DVDs are viewed on dinky laptops and the only person left in the world who hasn't read The Da Vinci Code contentedly whips through the last few chapters.
It is not always thus, however. "I have had some terrible journeys on this route," says Helen Frank, who uses the line to visit her family in Leeds from her home near Birmingham. "There was the train that stopped for an hour, about 10 minutes from the station I needed to get off at. And the time in December when all the heating on the train broke. There always seems to be some problem. But today," she looked around with the air of someone not quite daring to believe it, "it's been all right."
As we push on from Sheffield, I lurch down to the buffet car. Passing a couple of people sitting in the vestibule, I point out that there are still plenty of spare seats. "It's OK," says Dan Mitchell, a student. "I don't mind it here. I can play my music loud and not annoy anyone."
While I buy my cup of tea from them, Matt and Mike solve some of the riddle for me. "This is a train we've hired from Midland Mainline," says Matt. "It's got more carriages that the Virgin train would have, so normally it would be a bit more busy than this. And the train coming back down gets really packed. People standing up, people standing everywhere. It can be pretty bad."
But not this morning. There have been blue skies all the way up and as we pull quietly into York, dead on time, the sun comes out. This is how taking the train is meant to be.
Overcrowded, overpriced and underserviced: conditions on our trains are igniting increasing anger and protest among passengers around the country. But are services really that bad? We took a ride on seven commuter trips
Liverpool to Norwich, via Manchester
Monday morning beneath the elaborate Victorian wrought-iron arches of Warrington Central station. The train, a vivid lime colour, pulls in to platform 1 on time at 8.16am, and about 80 people surge on to a service that already has no empty seats.
This 20-minute leg of the Liverpool-Norwich train service to Manchester is so regularly overcrowded that it has given birth to the Warrington Rail Users Group - just one example of a growing fight-back mood among passengers on the rail lines with the worst conditions. This train rage erupted into rebellion last month when Somerset and Wiltshire commuters, fed up with being packed into shortened trains, staged a fares strike against First Great Western. The head of railways at the Department for Transport helped fuel such anger when he told a parliamentary committee that at peak travel times, passengers should accept that they might have to stand for up to half an hour.
As we pull out of Warrington, around a dozen people huddle by the doors in each of the four Central Trains carriages. Another 10 people are crowded in the aisle amid the display of reserved tickets above the seats. The temperature in the carriage is oppressively warm. "Not in service, please alight," blinks the electronic sign at the end of carriage A, confusingly.
Elaine Burgess, who works in human resources in Manchester, travels from Birchwood each day with her colleague, Jason Tarry. She is trying to stand and balance a cup of tea as the train lurches towards the city. "I have only been doing this journey for three months and I didn't have any expectations that it would be great," she says. "But the train is rubbish and there are never any spare seats."
Tarry says: "Every time we get the train we have to stand up. It is very rare for us to get a seat. The only good thing about this train is it is quicker than the stopping trains. The problem is we can't afford to park in Manchester."
On the outskirts of Manchester, the train shudders dramatically, flinging some of the standing passengers across the carriages. Most of the commuters pour out at Manchester Oxford Road and for the first time, there are seats. As the train approaches the station, the passenger announcement system crackles inaudibly. "We are none the wiser," laughs Tarry.
Michael Jones, a software engineer, has calculated that it costs him precisely the same to drive into Manchester as the return ticket. "Eighty pence in diesel and then another £6 to park, which is the same cost as the train journey," Jones says. "I used to live in Kent and commute into London and this journey is just as bad. But at least in Kent you got trains with 12 coaches." He mostly uses his car, as the train is so unreliable.
Mark Horrocks, a web designer from Warrington, has been using the 8.16am train service for seven years. "They don't have enough carriages on, but in the past six months it has got a bit better. I would say that six of the seven years have been bad. I have seen people fainting and having panic attacks because they are suffering from claustrophobia. Sometimes the toilet is blocked and the door is open and it stinks. It is not a great service and the most that you hope for is it is running on time." He thinks the train company should put on extra carriages and jettison them at Manchester when they are no longer needed. He is so frustrated by the journey, he is thinking of starting a blog.
There may be some comfort, though, for frazzled commuters. Central Trains says it will soon increase the number of carriages on the service.
Bedford to Sutton, via central London
Passengers on the former Thameslink route running into central London and southwards on to Wimbledon and Sutton had high hopes when the franchise changed hands in April last year. Surely the new company - First Capital Connect - had won the franchise because it was going to provide big improvements, more trains and better punctuality? Wrong, wrong and wrong.
The new company has put its stickers over the old Thameslink ones but they are the same, tired old trains, and there are fewer of them. The company says Thameslink had 86 of the special trains needed for the network but loaned out 12 to Southern Railways. Those are not due back until 2009, although First Capital Connect is hoping to get them earlier. "Capacity is our biggest single issue. It is completely unacceptable that people have to travel like this," said a spokeswoman. Passengers agree. "The overcrowding has got worse. It is simply ghastly. It makes me so angry," says Jeff Segal, who has just spent the journey to Herne Hill station squashed against a window.
Passengers often can't get on trains northbound from south London in the mornings or southbound from Blackfriars station in the evening. They thump on the windows and yell at squashed up people inside to squash up more. Passengers say First Capital Connect has cut some of the peak-hour trains from eight carriages to four, making the trains even more packed. The company says the trains had already been shortened by Thameslink. So that's that. "When they went for the franchise they specifically promised to increase the number of eight-carriage trains. And all I can see is that they have stuck FCC stickers over Thameslink ones," complains Tim Musgrave, a regular commuter to Blackfriars.
First Capital Connect blames the Department for Transport for drawing up the franchise badly and claims it is not allowed, under the terms of the franchise, to buy more rolling stock. The DfT acknowledges it gave the franchise to FCC because it offered good value for money to taxpayers, not necessarily the best service for customers. It is clear that the system, by selling to the highest bidder, gives little incentive to a train operator to lease more rolling stock - quite the contrary, as it wants to maximise profit.
The DfT cannot answer why FCC runs shorter trains in the rush hour or why its timetable does not have more peak-hour services. For that you are directed to the Office of the Rail Regulator. It in turn refers questions to Porterbrook Leasing, which owns the rolling stock. Everyone passes responsibility.
Still, the DfT says, First Capital Connect is investing money in CCTV cameras and "revenue protection" at stations. "We don't want bloody CCTV, we just want more seats," says Desmond Kelly, as he boards another crowded service.
Warminster to Cardiff Central, via Bath and Bristol
At the centre of last month's rail-fare rebellion over cattle-car conditions, which saw them proffering spoof "Worst Late Western" tickets to bemused inspectors, my fellow commuters on this particular day have a new and surprising beef - they can get a seat. It's not that they have a masochistic streak; rather, they suspect that the improvement has happened only because the media descended in force to witness the rebellion, and when the publicity has died down it will be back to standing room only.
"It's too good to be true," says Dave Jones, 32, an office worker who commutes into Bristol every day. "First Great Western have been embarrassed that the protest put them into the spotlight and for the moment they've got it sorted, but it won't last. Come back in a few weeks' time and you'll see."
The train we've caught is the 8.03am at Bath Spa station. It is five minutes late but we easily get a seat. Anna, the photographer, and I are disappointed that we ditched our cups of tea at Bath thinking it would be so full that we'd be spilling them over our fellow commuters.
We jump off at Keynsham, a stop short of Bristol, to see if the next train is any busier. This one, the 8.32am, is seven minutes late and more crowded. We squeeze into the corridor between two carriages with a lawyer, Rebecca Cobb, civil servant, Mark Billing, and nanny, Anna Rule, who is going to the zoo with her charges, two-year-old twins Lola and Louis. Louis certainly doesn't mind that the train is a little crowded - as a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan, he's just glad to be on a train.
Billing, who is perched on a flip-up seat, is another commuter who seems upset that the train isn't desperately cramped. "It just shows it can be done - but I'm not sure it will last."
The train arrives at Bristol Temple Meads a few minutes late but, in truth, it hasn't been too uncomfortable. Which seems only right for a journey that lasts less than 20 minutes and costs £6.50 return.
Gravesend to London Charing Cross, via Dartford
This isn't too bad, I think at first, when I get on Southeastern's 8.06am train at Dartford. The sun is shining, the fields are green ... and I get a seat. I don't even have to push a pregnant woman over to get it - I just stroll through the empty carriage. "This is great, it's not usually this quiet," says Colin Best, who commutes every day from Swanscombe in Kent to Lewisham in south London, where he works for the council. "But it won't last."
He's right. We hit Barnehurst, then Eltham, then Kidbrooke and the people keep on coming. A handful of stations later, and the carriage is packed. I get up to investigate. People tut as I squeeze past and I wonder if I'm going to spark some train rage. Cathy Judge, who works for a law firm in Westminster, got on at Falconwood and is resigned to standing, crammed up against the seats in the middle of the carriage, for her half-hour journey. "When the trains are like this, they're terrible," she says. "The fares keep going up and the service gets worse." (In January, Southeastern's fares rose by an above-average 6.3%.)
By the time we reach London Bridge station, we're jam-packed like livestock. Nobody talks and nobody looks at anyone else, even though our bodies are intertwined as if we were in some strange, fully clothed orgy. The doors open and people spill out like fish guts. A disabled man, who has been forced to stand for his journey, carefully gets off with his wheeled walker.
Kelly Flynn has been waiting at London Bridge since the train she was on was forced to stop there because someone was taken ill (perhaps not the train company's fault, but I choose to believe it is - maybe someone who felt faint and sick, as I do, after having their head wedged under somebody else's armpit for half an hour). Flynn commutes every day from New Eltham to central London, where she works for the National Patient Safety Agency, and has seen four packed trains come and go before the one I am on has enough space on it. "They've removed seats and loos on the trains so they can cram in more people, and they say this is what passengers want. But I don't. Nobody has ever asked me what I want." She adds (and here's a familiar theme): "And the ticket prices just keep on rising."
The relief of reclaimed personal space is short-lived - even more people get on at London Bridge. As we approach Charing Cross, condensation streams down the inside of the doors. There's a fug of hot breath and body heat. "This is hideous, isn't it," I say to a woman's armpit. "Hell," agrees the armpit.
London Euston to Crewe
As soon as the departure board flashes up the platform number, the waiting crowd swarms through the station, breaking into a run, desperate to get aboard the Virgin Trains service first. We heave our way through hot bodies, but we're too late - no seats are available."It's like a bleeding refugee camp in here," grumbles one sweating man. "And today's a good day." The train wobbles furiously. I feel seasick. Out of service, screams a sign taped to the toilet door. The next two loos have also malfunctioned, a handwritten sign informs us. Curled in a ball near by is Martin from Rugby. "It's cramped and stinky," he says. "We need some aromatic [sic]."
But then amid the misery I meet Richard Branson's biggest fan: "I've done this twice a week for eight years and it's infinitely better than it was - more seats, faster, cleaner. This is not bad", insists Barbara Stevens from Cumbria, who works in London. Chinwe, who is going to visit her parents in Glasgow and is relieved to have seats for her three kids, agrees that the service is good.
The manager's voice crackles over the speakers to inform us where we are, but the system's electronic screeching drowns him out.
Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh
If you are strap-hanging on train lines in England and value the remains of your sanity, look away now. It will do you no good to read about the record 88% satisfaction rates that Scottish rail commuters report, nor the £1.9bn, seven-year programme to introduce extra carriages, longer platforms and new rail lines across Scotland, or that train operators rarely breach their promise that no one should stand for more than 10 minutes. Even a recent BBC Radio Scotland phone-in on commuting struggled to find hair-raising stories. In fact, several callers bandied words such as "excellent" and "very comfortable".
This is not to say that all commuting in Scotland is bliss. But even at its worst it's more like a light singe, compared to the flame-roasted-on-a-spit kind of hell that many commuters in the south-east of England would recognise.
If local mythology were to be believed, one of Scotland's black spots is the Fife Circle line that links up commuter towns such as Gordon Brown's birthplace Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline and Inverkeithing in west Fife with Edinburgh. Yet Kirkcaldy commuters can choose between five trains within half an hour on the morning commuter run, and capacity has been increased by a third recently, so when we hop aboard the 7.30am from Kirkcaldy on a Friday, I find many travellers exuding an aura of sleepy calm as the train clatters sedately in the early morning sunlight across the Forth Bridge. Our carriage is two-thirds full. One man stands by the doors, but only to better enjoy a movie on his iPod. Oh, there is one flutter of rebelliousness in the otherwise empty corridor, from a cyclist who finds her bicycle-rack space blocked by another bike and the restraining strap broken.
There are some bad routes. Services into Glasgow Central can be tedious and, for some people boarding at Paisley Gilmore Street and Motherwell, standing can be routine. But the journey takes only 10 or 11 minutes, so the local public transport executive, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, neatly meets its "10-minute standing" target.
There are some justified complaints about reliability on the likes of the single line running from the outlying towns of Bathgate, Livingstone and Uphall to Edinburgh. Scottish ministers say the line will be "dualed" in 2007, but there are no signs of any shovels being lifted so far.
Birmingham to Edinburgh, via York
Boarding the 8.03am from Birmingham New Street to York on a Monday morning I am salivating at the thought of the horrors I am about to endure, courtesy of the less than universally beloved Virgin Trains. Would that have been too much to ask? Apparently so. Did it have to be so pleasant? So prompt? Typical! As we slide smoothly out of New Street at exactly three minutes past the hour, the words of a fellow passenger pretty much sum it up: "Hi, it's Sue, I'm on the train. No, no, it's fine. There's loads of room."
The route cuts a confident path through the heart of England, via Burton-on-Trent, Tamworth and Derby. Outside, bouncing streams overhung with brown winter trees speed past; inside, it looks like an advert for rail travel. Stress-free passengers conduct cordial conversations, classic DVDs are viewed on dinky laptops and the only person left in the world who hasn't read The Da Vinci Code contentedly whips through the last few chapters.
It is not always thus, however. "I have had some terrible journeys on this route," says Helen Frank, who uses the line to visit her family in Leeds from her home near Birmingham. "There was the train that stopped for an hour, about 10 minutes from the station I needed to get off at. And the time in December when all the heating on the train broke. There always seems to be some problem. But today," she looked around with the air of someone not quite daring to believe it, "it's been all right."
As we push on from Sheffield, I lurch down to the buffet car. Passing a couple of people sitting in the vestibule, I point out that there are still plenty of spare seats. "It's OK," says Dan Mitchell, a student. "I don't mind it here. I can play my music loud and not annoy anyone."
While I buy my cup of tea from them, Matt and Mike solve some of the riddle for me. "This is a train we've hired from Midland Mainline," says Matt. "It's got more carriages that the Virgin train would have, so normally it would be a bit more busy than this. And the train coming back down gets really packed. People standing up, people standing everywhere. It can be pretty bad."
But not this morning. There have been blue skies all the way up and as we pull quietly into York, dead on time, the sun comes out. This is how taking the train is meant to be.
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