I like travelling by train so the opportunity not to have to drive the Farnborough College was a welcome opportunity to sit back and relax with only one change. Or so I thought.

A Cancelled Cross-Country train on the way back meant I had to “Station-hop” back to Wolverhampton using 6 different trains at these stops:

• Basingstoke
• Reading
• Oxford
• Banbury
• Birmingham Moor Street
• Birmingham New Street

6 hours to get back from a journey that should have taken 3.

This was more of a Michael Portillo trip than a business one in the end and the stripy one would have been hard pressed to get a day’s filming into this journey. Also, as these were commuter trains rather than inter-city type, the seating wasn’t the most comfortable and no trolley service except on the excellent Javelins between Reading and Oxford, and as they were so fast, no time to grab a cuppa.

With politicians and the environmentalists pressing for more use of public transport, how can this be justified when the service is sooo poor? Years of underinvestment in the railways, or the wrong investment, have left a delicate system that has little resilience and that’s in people as well as infrastructure and trains.

I find it incredulous that there are no other companies offering trains from Manchester to the South Coast and vice-verca other than Cross Country. A monopoly really that’s gone unspotted by the miasma of a failed privatisation that should be investigated.

Here’s some views of the stations anyway for your enjoyment:

Farnborough Station at 1410 hrs.

Reading Station

Oxford Station

Banbury Station

Birmingham New Street

Wolverhampton Station reached at 2000 hrs