Don't get me wrong, I love train travel!

To borrow a phrase from the wonderful Stephen Colbert, I'm putting British trains on notice. We've just booked tickets for two journeys in the next 10 days and both have left me incredulous.

Journey 1: London Liverpool Street to Norwich. When booking these tickets online, we discovered that we can book and pay without any problems, but actually getting the tickets is a little more tricky. There are three delivery options: 1) Use a Fast Ticket machine at stations (no cost); 2) Mail in 3-5 days (5 pounds); or 3) overnight delivery (10 pounds). Being somewhat reluctant to fork out additional cash on top of the ticket price and credit card fee, I opted for the Fast Ticket machine -- only to discover that there isn't one at London's Liverpool Street Station. So, if you're travelling from there, you have to pay a minimum of 5 pounds to get your tickets in advance. When Anglia Railways had the franchise, you could pick tickets up at a dedicated Anglia service point on Platform 10 -- fantastic. Now, the irritatingly named "One" organization (which somehow managed to be awarded the service) have removed that -- and indeed any levels of service -- from Liverpool Street. Bastards.

Journey 2: Cardiff to Carmarthen. Now, my problem here is not the cost (fairly typical for the generally extortionate British trains), but the time the journey will take. The distance is but 60 miles. The journey time? A staggering 2 hours and 10 minutes. Direct! That's less than 30 miles an hour! I presume our train will look something like this:



Either that, or it's going via Aberystwyth.