As King Charles sunk into his seat for his speech from the throne I wonder how many embattled train passengers let out a small sigh of relief last week at Labour’s promise to renationlise the rails?

It appears to be full steam ahead for Great British Railways - with new legislation pledging a simplified system for the whole network so that it can run in the national interest - that will see contracts steadily returned to public ownership as they expire or before that if operators fail to deliver.

As someone who does nothing but flirt with train travel it’s a hard judge as to whether my (limited) experience is reflective of the overall picture.

But safe to say complicated - if not also extortionate - ticket pricing, cancelled services or better still those which terminate abruptly when you’re still three stops from home and overcrowding so significant that riding underneath someone else’s armpit appears common place doesn’t tempt me into climbing aboard any more than I already do at present.

By way of comparison - I’m taking my somewhat fickle and flaky relationship with public transport to the continent later this year where in an attempt to swerve some pricey air fares the train will indeed take the strain.

And while a ticket to London leaves me with little change from £30 for an hour’s ride - the internet tells me crossing borders at double the journey time - can be done for half the cost in Europe - and at peak times too?

(Now if this was England I’d be questioning how reliable any cheap pre-9am weekend service is in reality or whether on the day I’m going to be greeted with an airless double-decker bus and rail replacement service. But for the sake of my bank balance - I’m risking it.)

Anyway, I digress…

If the UK’s rail industry thought the pandemic threw it into absolute turmoil, the years which have followed haven’t been much kinder

Strikes, overtime bans and protracted pay negotiations with transport unions has seen the government go to war with an entire workforce while inflicting months upon months of misery on passengers.

There has been the bombshell cancellation of HS2’s ‘northern leg’ project while plans to close more than 1,000 ticket offices to save money also dropped like a proverbial stone.

So badly in fact that considerable back peddling has since been witnessed and all ticket offices remain safe for now.

Passenger numbers though are reportedly now very close to pre-Covid times - while there are some predictions the number of people choosing to travel by train could even double by 2050.

In Kent, perhaps that forecast isn’t too much of a stretch with increasing numbers of 20mph zones, escalating parking charges from cash-strapped councils, extensions to the ULEZ zone and now proposals to charge drivers to use the Blackwall Tunnel bearing down daily on commuters and their cars.

People need a reliable rail network to get to work and school while tourism and our hospitality industries need one that is both economical and accessible at all hours of the day - and maybe night?

And no sustainable travel scheme or one that wants people like me to ditch their car will be a success without it.

Could Great British Railways be about to deliver exactly that?