Having moved house but not job I have, until recently, been a long distance commuter between Leicester and London (St Pancras). So, for my sins, I have become quite well acquainted with the Midland MainLine train services. Despite being an avid who-dunnit fan there are a number of mysteries I have yet to solve about their services.

Midland Mainline cover a large part of the country from Leeds (and recently Manchester) Sheffield through Nottingham Derby and Leicester and the smaller intermediate towns to Luton and London (St Pancras). Leicester has a very frequent service of 4 trains an hour but for some mysterious reason the trains need company and run in two batches (one slow and one fast service departing within 5 minutes of each other) with an half hour wait till the next service. The main result of this seems to be when the fast service is delayed and departs after the slower service they gleefully use the fact that they are following a slow service as an excuse for even longer delay.

You need a degree in mathmatics and the patience of a saint to work out the fare structure. There seems to be no logic in the rules as to which trains special fares apply to and which they don't. Generally you can safely assume though that fares are high, as with all train companies, especially for travelling at any remotely useful hour of the day anywhere near London. They also have a very annoying wide definition of rush hour so premium prices are paid for any trains towards London from the early hours until 10am and from London from 3.25pm until 7.25 pm. Advance supersaver tickets are good value but you have to book 7 days in advance and know exactly what trains you want to travel on and stick to those. Though of course that doesn't mean they feel obliged to provide those services and if the one you booked is cancelled or severely delayed they generously allow you to travel on another service but you won't have your seat reservation honoured. There are some bargains to be had for the eagle-eyed dedicated detective. The website has details of special promotions and you can set up email alerts to be notified of these. The local papers such as the Leicester Mercury often run promotions for cheap fares or two for one offers which are worth keeping an eye open for.

Although staff at the stations are reasonably helpful, queues are often long and the fare structure is so complicated that enquiries often take some time. It does seem sometimes that there is a conspiracy to stop people travelling. In theory you can book tickets in advance at station ticket offices, online (www.midlandmainline.com) and on the telephone (through Q jump). My attempts to use both the later facilities ended in frustration. The web site on several occasions lulled me into a false sense of security by asking lots of questions which I duly filled in answers to and then right at the end decided it had a technical fault and tickets could not be booked. The telephone service operator was extremely friendly helpful and efficient -sounding with only one snag : the tickets ordered never did arrive. Do not be tempted to wait until you are on the train to buy tickets because they will only sell standard open tickets and you can not use any rail card discounts.

This system now works pretty well. Reservations are free and on most of the cheaper fare schemes they are compulsory. On services running on time, in my experience, reservation slips were put out accurately. When trains are delayed the staff face the dillemma of putting out the reservation slips and causing more delay or leaving without. In my opinion they rightly assume most passengers would rather the train left as near as possible to time. If you don't have a reservation it can seem like there are no seats atall. Before you resign yourself to standing for the whole journey it is worth hanging around seats with reservation slips which are not occupied five minutes before the train pulls out of one of the terminus station. This is due to the mystery of the dissapearing passengers which is played out at the start of every journey from London. On average half the reservations are not taken up and the game is to guess which seats will remain free. Whether the passengers were ghosts, missed the train or just sat elsewhere is the subject of much speculation amongst the hardened who-dunnit reading commuters (yes ok we are a sad bunch)

There is a bar on virtually all services and a trolley service on most. The trolley service appears to have a mind of its own and runs when it feels like it and the hot drinks urn is equally capricious. Just when you most want the free tea but don't want to walk to the bar the urn decides to give up the ghost.The complimentary tea and coffee is good but otherwise it is far better to bring food and drink with you as there is a limited range and its expensive. My advice is also to always bring some food and drink with you especially if travelling with children becaus eyou can never tell when the train is going to be delayed and if it is you can usually assume the trolley has gone awol and the Bar runs out of food. Also don't be tempted to stock up at the railway stations which in my experience are as bad if not worse than on the train. St Pancras station's catering and shopping facilities currently have got to be the worst of all London stations (there is a Burger King across the road if you are desperate and have enough time for the dash across the building works).

It is amazing how in common with most train companies strange disasters apparently quite out of the control of the train companies befall trains you wish to board. Quite apart from the genuine tragedies of suicides and crashes (which in my experience Midland Mainline cope well with) there are the stream of scarcely beleiveable excuses which would be funny if you were not late for a meeting with a grumpy no-sense of humour boss To be fair about 90 per cent of the times I have travelled on their services the trains have been more or less on time. But the frustrating thing is you never know when delay will strike. Sheep allegedly straying on the line aswell as the malovelent leaves which seem to lie in wait for trains have accounted for several long delays. The staff genuinely seem to do their best to keep passengers informed but the clues given such as "We are delayed by a previously delayed service" and "engineering works" which seem to overrun themselves with no human intervention are not very helpful in solving the pressing connundrum of when the train might eventually turn up at its appointed destination.