Welcome aboard the Sardine Express: It's Britain's most crowded commuter train, packed so tight you can barely breathe, and it'll cost you £3,500 a year!
The 07.32 from Woking to London Waterloo is most crowded train in UK
One in five London commuters has to stand on their journey to work
Despite record high fares improvement is unlikely to come anytime soon
The crush is suffocating. All five of my senses are being bombarded, from the overpowering stench of a fellow commuters breath barely inches away (chicken balti was on the menu last night, I deduce) to the Tannoy announcements, played on a torturous endless loop, urging us repeatedly to report unattended packages and mind the gap.
Even the lighting is a visual assault. Suddenly theres a sharp jab in my ribs: Oi, mate, a man beside me says. Youre invading my personal space.
Personal space? If only there was such a luxury. I feel I am on more intimate terms with this man than I am with my own wife. I can smell we share the same brand of shaving gel. His hair, still shower damp, is brushing against my cheek with every jolt and lurch of the carriage.
Welcome to the hell on wheels that is the 47-minute commute aboard Britains officially most overcrowded morning rush hour train, the 07.32 from Woking to London Waterloo.
Last month this South West Trains service was named in a list of shame of the Top Ten overcrowded train services in Britain.
According to the official Department for Transport figures, its overloaded by 154 per cent, meaning every morning there are 1,278 passengers playing a daily grim game of musical chairs for the 738 seats available.
All this seems a terrible shame, since rail travel at its best can be one of the divine pleasures of life.
As an author who spends much of his life writing about railways, no one loves trains more than me.
That eminent railway traveller, Paul Theroux, once wrote: I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Would he want to be on the 07.32 from Woking? I doubt it.
The truth is that too much modern train travel has become like this, where we travel trapped in overpriced, garish, harshly lit, cacophonous, beeping plastic trains and squashed by a miserable mass of humanity.
Fellow passenger Georgina Kelly, 27, from Woking, on her way to her job as a PA in the City is trying to stay cool, and zoned out with her iPod earphones in her ears. I rarely get a seat, she says. And for that I have to pay £320 a month for my ticket.
Our carriage sways and lurches not helped by the fact the line is basically unchanged since Victorian times, with an antiquated third rail power system the train is powered by an electric track underneath as opposed to the more modern and efficient overhead electricity cables.
The South West Trains service was named at the top of a list of shame recently, but bosses claim the antiquated railways are full, and that the company couldn't run more trains, even if it had them +5
The South West Trains service was named at the top of a list of shame recently, but bosses claim the antiquated railways are full, and that the company couldn't run more trains, even if it had them
They were introduced in the Twenties by the old Southern Railway and are now considered obsolete, yet no one has had the courage or resources to rip them out and start again.
Maria Gines, 26, from Weybridge, on her way to a property management course, says: What I hate is the crush and people with bad breath in your face.
'Its so packed I once had someone fall asleep on my shoulder standing up. And people are often unkind to elderly people and young children in the crush.
Pinstriped Andy Duncan, 45, on his way to his job in the City, is squashed in the corridor outside the First Class section, which is two-thirds empty, but at around £5,000 for a season ticket, compared to £3,500 in standard class prohibitively expensive.
He says there are just too many excuses on the line. They need to get their act together, he adds. Last week, they cancelled this train. Can you imagine what hell it was on the one that followed?
Hundreds of thousands across the UK suffer dire conditions like this on their daily scramble to work.
A miserable one in five of the 545,000 passengers travelling into London on any morning has to stand, with trains serving Paddington, Euston and Victoria the worst.
The chief of Londons biggest rail franchise, the Govia Thameslink, risked the wrath of passengers last week by saying he intended to tackle the problem of overcrowding by making it easier to stand. A euphemism for: Its getting worse, so take it or leave it.
In the North, where many passengers have to stand for more than 20 minutes around Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, the trains are often even worse with elderly carriages made of bus parts, running on four, harsh-riding wheels in the style of the vehicles pulled by Stephensons Rocket.
Commuting wasnt always as bad as this. Until the Eighties many commuter trains around the south of England had a buffet car, where you might treat yourself to a noggin or two to ease the pain on the way back from the office and join your mates in the card schools which were features of such trains.
London Waterloo is at capacity at both morning and evening peak, but infrastructure to alleviate this will cost billions, and Treasury funding is unlikely any time soon +5
London Waterloo is at capacity at both morning and evening peak, but infrastructure to alleviate this will cost billions, and Treasury funding is unlikely any time soon
Brighton line commuters could relax in armchairs in Art Deco luxury on the Brighton Belle, breakfasting on freshly grilled kippers with a cheering Bucks Fizz.
Meanwhile, Edwardian era commuters on the Metropolitan Line into Baker Street could reserve seats in a Pullman car, where waiters in crisp uniforms would serve a full English breakfast amid the elegant mahogany marquetry, green damask blinds and thick carpets.
No chance of this today, where not a single train south of the Thames any longer has a buffet car, and on my 07.32, even if one of the elusive snack trolleys could be squeezed aboard, it would be crushed out of shape.
As if to confirm this, Barbara the guard announces as we reach Surbiton: Due to sheer numbers of people on board, I can no longer walk down the train.
Since privatisation 20 years ago, only around 6,000 new carriages have been built, and more than half our trains date from the old days of British Railways
No wonder, by the time we get to Waterloo, Britains busiest station, Im limp and dizzy.
In a mere 47-minute journey, Ive morphed into Mr Angry Commuter of Woking and Im looking for someone to blame.
In the old days I might have marched up to the stationmasters office and had a stiff word.
But in the fragmented and Kafkaesque world of Britains railway system today, no one takes full responsibility any more.
Ministers blame the train companies and the train firms blame Department for Transport bureaucrats.
In this bizarre Alice In Wonderland structure, although the railways are privatised, no new trains can be built without the say-so of the Government.
Its a miserable fact that since privatisation 20 years ago, only around 6,000 new carriages have been built, and more than half our trains date from the old days of British Railways.
To keep up, industry experts say we should increase this number eightfold, but the main problem is the ancient infrastructure built on the Woking line by the London and Southampton Railway in 1840.
Our railway is full, and even if we had more trains we couldnt run them, Tim Shoveller, boss of South West Trains, tells me.
Waterloo is at capacity in the morning and evening peak. State-of-the-art infrastructure would cost a fortune and the Treasury is unlikely to stump up any time soon.
Ministers boast about Londons new £14.8 billion Crossrail commuter line, due to open in 2018. Yet the track record on improvements for London commuters is poor.
The new Thameslink commuter line is expected to finally open in four years time 18 years behind schedule at a cost of £6 billion.
At the same time, ever more people are using the railways with 1.6 billion annual passenger journeys, the highest ever, and rising.
But this isnt because were all hooked on the joy of the train. Many are motorists put off by road congestion, or young people who can no longer afford a car.
But most are the poor bloody commuters driven into the outer suburbs by sky-high London property prices.
The number of commuters travelling into the capital has risen by a third in the past four years alone.
Which means that Georgina, Maria and Andy on the Woking line and others like them are condemned to the hell of their daily commute, trapped in a ratchet of ever-higher season ticket costs.
Season tickets will rise by 2.5 per cent in the New Year, hiking yet again the most expensive fares in Europe. Ministers pledge the rise will fund future rail improvements. Scant comfort for many of us who will never see it in our lifetimes.
Mariko Fryatt, 30, from Esher, a City banker, spends £2,000 a year on her commute, most of which is spent in the aisle, yet confesses: This is nothing compared to my home city of Tokyo, where they employ pushers to squash people on to the crammed trains.
Please Mariko, I beg. Keep that suggestion to yourself.
