"You don't do the lottery surely" said the man on the train as we stood side by side in the corridor.

This was in response to my doubly unlucky dose of travel trouble.  I had gone down to London on Saturday when, thanks to engineering tardiness at Kings Cross, my train spent an hour standing in Stevenage and then a second hour tantalisingly close to Finsbury Park station, then crawled in and released us.

Finsbury Park is a handy ten minute bus ride from David's flat but when I designated Kings Cross as the station at which I would activate my Oyster top-up that was in expectation of the train fulfilling its normal destiny.  So I accepted a free tube ride and added another half hour or so to my late running journey.

Returning to Kings Cross yesterday to come home I found that the 13.00 to Edinburgh was not going past Newcastle thanks to an electrical problem on the line further north.  No problem, a speedy connection with a local train to Berwick and onwards in a fleet of what were no doubt luxury coaches had been arranged said the station staff.  The fact that the train guard still thought we were going all the way to Edinburgh was a communication failure soon put right.  And anyway said she optimistically it may be fixed by the time we get to Newcastle.

It wasn't.

But only 40 minutes to wait so I had a coffee and a biscuit in the warmest corner I could find in Costa's little cafe.  For Newcastle is a drafty station.

As time grew closer to 16.30 and there was no sign of the Berwick train, confidently still declaring itself to be On Time on the departure board, some degree of doubt crept into my mind.  At this point a shortly due Aberdeen train was mentioned and rumoured to be going across country to Carlisle and then on to Edinburgh.  Could our train not have done that I thought.

At about 16.40 still claiming to be On Time the Berwick train trundled in but kept its doors shut for ten minutes or.  Before they opened passengers for points north were entreated not to board it but to wait for the Aberdeen train.  Half a dozen people got on leaving several hundred on the platform.

At about 16.59 there was much whistling, waving of arms and striding up and down by station staff but the by now admitting to not being on time 16.30 to Berwick didn't move.  Every so often over the next half hour they tried again but the train sat still like a reluctant sheepdog.  To cheer us up at some point it was announced that the Aberdeen train was outside the station waiting for a platform.  Unfortunately it seemed that the stationary Berwick train was occupying the required platform.  It was then redundantly announced that the Berwick train had a technical problem.

I judged at 17.30 that I could risk going to the gents and in the few minutes I was away the Berwick train disappeared but the Aberdeen one didn't arrive.  After a while it did but as everyone tried to pile onto a clearly already packed train we were tempted with the announcement that another Edinburgh train was due in less than half an hour.

Fearing that it might be a long half hour I got aboard as did pretty well everybody and a bit before 18.00 we were underway and it appeared that the electrical problem had been sorted for there was no further talk of Carlisle.

Half an hour or so into the journey a passenger was asked over the train intercom to return to the foodbar as the buffet car is now known.  The girl concerned heard her name but didn't catch the message.  Hard enough for anyone but doubly hard for an American as she was.

"I've just come from there."  "You must have left something."

She had of course, a passport I think.  Now this train was so crowded that she chose to wait till we got to Berwick then jump off the train and run down the platform to the foodbar rather than fight her way through the standing passengers.

The driver hurtled the train along and we got to Edinburgh about 19.20.  I got through the scrum of disembarking and embarking voyagers and up the steps happy with the thought of slipping across Princes Street and onto a 22.  The street was empty of buses and full of torchlight processors so I had to set off down Leith Walk on foot.  As I got closer to home I decided that a Tailend fish supper would just hit the spot.

The food would clearly have been fresh given the crowd waiting for it to appear from the fryer but I had had enough waiting for one day so raided my deep freeze instead.

The silver lining is that I can probably claim a free return trip to London under East Coast's delay compensation scheme.  But do I want to risk it?  Maybe I should try the lottery instead.