ON days when trains are late or fail to arrive at all - a bane that, travellers complain, happens all too often - it is common for older minds to shunt back to the days of steam and in its vapour see images of the era when the railways were run efficiently.

In that heyday of chuffing engines, trains galore, lines that went everywhere and gas-lit stations serving even the smallest communities, there were, they'll tell, journey times that were better even than today's and punctuality and reliability that people could set their watches by.

But, then, nostalgia can, like steam, cloud the real picture of so-called golden ages when things were supposedly so much better.

And wasn't a glimpse of harsh reality rudely given to the scores of rail buffs on a reverie ride on the first stopping steam train to travel through East Lancashire for 35 years when it broke down and left them stranded for five hours - because of leaves on the line?

As an explanation for present-day train delays and cancellation, it has been roundly derided by frustrated commuters as a flimsy cloak for the inefficiency of the rail operators. Never used to happen in the old days, did it?, they complain.

Yet, the nostalgia steam-train trip that turned into a nightmare proved that indeed it could - and that keeping to the timetable in the good old days was no more easy than it is now.