I was planning a little trip into Liverpool for an appointment just off the city centre recently.

Generally speaking, when I’ve got to go into Liverpool or Manchester, these days I prefer to take the train – I’m trying to manage my carbon footprint (and avoid paying extortionate parking charges).

I’ve had to do similar trips over recent months with little or no trouble – no more than the inconvenience of hanging around on a draughty platform for 20 or 30 minutes.

So it was with a happy heart I put my journey details into The Trainline website.

I dodged the Northwich to Chester, change trains and then on to Liverpool Lime Street in favour of the more ‘direct’ route from Hartford, aiming to arrive at around 9am on a normal working day.

Then I got my results.

To be honest, I thought they must have moved Liverpool to somewhere north of Preston.

Surely that couldn’t have been right – almost 90 minutes and at least one change.

So I did my internet search all over again.

And got the same result.

A colleague then put me in the picture.

Liverpool Lime Street is undergoing ‘transformation work’ which is scheduled to last for eight weeks and started on June 2.

The station won’t be completely closed but many trains will start and terminate at Liverpool South Parkway instead.

This means for my proposed journey I will need to either catch a Merseyrail service into the city centre or maybe there will be a rail replacement bus.

That explain the stupidly long journey time and the two changes.

But if that is bad enough, rail passengers in the area are also having to to deal with the utter shambles that is the Northern Rail revised train timetable.

One day last week I was listening to the news on my radio (ironically while I was stuck in a lunch time traffic jam in the town centre) and was somewhat shocked to hear the much criticised Northern train operators had cancelled 300 (yep, 300) trains that day.

Being brutally frank, that is just not acceptable. There are no normal operational circumstances that can possibly justify this level of chaos that has been foisted on passengers.

I’ve heard all the excuses.

This is what Northern Rail had to say: “In order to make space on the network for the thousands of extra services, the timing of all GTR and most Northern services had to be changed. All of these new journeys needed to be individually approved by Network Rail to ensure the national rail network runs safely and smoothly.

“Unfortunately, as a result of the sheer number of changes required and the late running of some engineering improvements, the process took longer than anticipated, approvals for service changes were delayed and some timetable requests were changed.

“This meant train companies had much less time to prepare for the new timetable which required trains and drivers to run on different routes.

“The differences between the timetables submitted and those approved created a requirement for training that had not been anticipated.

“This meant that the necessary specialist training was not able to be completed in time for drivers to learn new routes and for operators to address all the logistical challenges.”

I’ll accept all of that. What it doesn’t explain is if the train companies knew in advance they didn’t have enough trained drivers and hadn’t had enough time to prepare, why on earth did they go ahead with the changes?

Interestingly, Northern then came up with a novel solution to the problem of having to cancel trains...cancelling trains.

The company announced last week it is cutting six per cent of daily train services (165 trains) until the end of July so it can start to ‘stabilise service levels over the next few weeks and, importantly, start to reduce the number of last-minute train cancellations’.

That sounds to me very much like an admission of defeat on the part of Northern.

To be honest, I thought Northern had already started its programme of train cancellations.

It promised to deliver two trains an hour on the mid Cheshire line – serving Northwich and Knutsford – when it was awarded the franchise in 2015.

But we’ve yet to see much sign of those of additional services around the clock.

The company has been waiting for diesel trains to be released for use in mid Cheshire following the electrification of the Manchester to Preston line.

But that hasn’t happened yet and there’s another promise that’s not been kept by Northern.

I’m inclined to agree with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. He told BBC Radio 4: “This fragmented, privatised rail system simply isn’t capable of providing a decent service to the public and the case for renationalisation has been well and truly made.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

By Guardian columnist The Fly in the Ointment