After colleagues repeatedly telling me that the sensible way to attend meetings in Edinburgh was to take the train, I eventually decided to take the hint, encouraged by the thought of battling with rush hour traffic to get over the Forth Bridge.

Knowing that our archaic rail link to Aberdeen was – to put it mildly – a tad slow, I braced myself and typed in the need for a train that would arrive in the capital before 8.15 am into theTrainline ticket web site. I knew that would mean an early start.

I assumed some computer malfunction when I typed in the details and was advised that the only way to get a train arriving in Edinburgh before 08:26 was to leave the previous day by 22:30 at the latest!

Surely some mistake?

Apparently not. I cannot imagine any other European country where it would be impossible to get a train just over a hundred miles from a major city into the capital for an early morning meeting.

(Come to think of it, I can't imagine any other European country where the cost of the train journey would be so high that you would probably save money by taking the car!)

We really have a long, long way to go if we are serious about getting people to switch from cars to rail. The current situation is a joke. And not a very good one.