CAN there be any more inspiring sight than a Northern Rail train speeding – or rather limping – towards the platform.

There I was struggling to think of a topic for this week’s column when a vision in purple came wheezing towards me at Manchester Victoria.

My inspiration had arrived.

We all piled on, standing room only as I accidentally clouted my seated comrades with the trailing edges of my winter coat.

The two-carriaged behemoth roared through Ashton-under-Lyne and Stalybridge on its way to the Pennines and civilisation beyond.

Seated now, with someone else’s long-forgotten Costa cup for company, I was too engrossed in my iPhone to notice when we stopped outside Mossley for 10 minutes.

The growing grumbling from my fellow cattle – sorry, passengers – alerted me to the fact that something was wrong. We waited and waited. Then, just for a change, we waited some more.

Eventually, our train spluttered into Mossley before heading off for glamorous Greenfield, the last stop on the wrong side of the hill.

But again the great vehicle halted, its dwindling band of passengers growing ever more funereal as the ordeal wore on.

Phone conversations became more irritable as travellers explained to their friends and family that their evening’s plans would have to be rejigged to make room for some unscheduled sightseeing in Lancashire. “How late am I going to be? I don’t know, the train’s just ****ing stopped.”

Forward. Stop. Forward. Stop.

Finally we made it to Greenfield. The carriage emptied further until there were only eight weary passengers left and not a smile between us, even though God’s Own County was but a few miles away.

On to Marsden, to Yorkshire, to civilisation. And then the excitement: could the driver get us to Slawit exactly an hour after we had been due to arrive in the jewel of the Colne Valley?

Alas, even this landmark was beyond us, as we rocked up an unsatisfactory 61 minutes late.

And there I departed. I assume the train made it the final five miles to Huddersfield. But perhaps not, maybe it’s stuck somewhere around Paddock, the remaining passengers drawing lots to see which of them gets eaten first.

Why the long delay? Signal problems at Greenfield, the Internet was good enough to tell me.

As Northern Rail would no doubt point out, it is not responsible for the track along which its spiffy 1970s trains run – or should that be “walk”?

It wasn’t the company’s fault there was a landslide at Greenfield early on Monday morning.

But would it really have hurt the driver to come on the intercom to explain this fact to the long-suffering passengers? Just a simple explanation, an apology, anything to acknowledge the inconvenience being caused to dozens of lives.

But there was nothing. Northern Rail, I know you love us but it wouldn’t hurt you to show it sometimes.

Strangely, that 97-minute trudge from Manchester was the more successful of my two attempted Northern Rail journeys on Monday.

Early that morning, I arrived at Slawit station to learn the wonderful news that the service to Manchester Victoria would not be turning up.

It was before dawn, it was even before landslide, but a staffing issue was the problem this time.

A Good Samaritan who had driven down from the hills to catch the early train offered her fellow would-be passengers a lift to Manchester.

Four of us piled into her car for a trip across the Pennines as dawn broke. Even with a drop-off at Ashton-under-Lyne, she got us to Victoria a mere 10 minutes after our train had been due to arrive.

On our way, as we passed through the grimmer suburbs of Greater Manchester, she reflected on the choice between living somewhere beautiful and living somewhere close to the city centre. “I wouldn’t swap the Colne Valley for this,” she said.

I couldn’t help but agree with her, despite Northern Rail.