The old slogan has a bit of a hollow ring to it these days: “Let the train take the strain.” For which many Scottish commuters and travellers might feel the urge to substitute “Let the train supply the strain.”

We’ll get on to Helensburgh specific problems in just a minute, but first let’s reflect on a whole host of media reports suggesting the rail travelling public is currently in a state of semi permanent scunnerdom.

The reasons for this are many and varied. A fairly constant theme is the fact that two and three carriage trains arrive where normal commuter experience would inform the dimmest scheduler that a six pack was the minimum requirement to offer adequate seating capacity for which folk had already paid quite handsomely.

Thus do we find Scots and visitors routinely having to stand the entire length of their journey, always supposing they manage to embark on the first place.

The response to inquiries about this is often to advise the hapless train customer to travel at less busy times, on less busy trains. Well of course. Duh!

There must be employers up and down the land who would be thrilled to have their workforce arriving at 10.45 instead of 8.45.

The next line of defence is to suggest that you can’t conjure up carriages from the thinner variety of air, and ordering up new rolling stock takes quite some time. As it does.

But those of us who have been plighting our troth to Scotrail these many years can’t help wondering why there seems just so many short trains arriving now compared with the pre-Abellio contract.

Do we all have faulty memory syndrome, or are we being collectively taken for an over crowded ride by a franchise supplier which has been accused of operating on the cheap in Scotland in order to facilitate more acceptable rail travel in the Netherlands from whence the company comes?

The story goes that profits from Scotland are being ferried across the North Sea to base camp, and if that is not the case this might be the moment to open the books to proper scrutiny.

But the second most common cause for complaint is perhaps the most interesting. Commuters and politicians on the Helensburgh beat are both up in arms about the number of services not running to time.

They and the company dispute the actual percentage of late running trains, but the figures at either just over or just under 50 per cent don’t make for happy reading.

However it’s the way Abellio is trying to improve this punctuality record which has caused long suffering travellers to fume in their non smoking, standing room only carriages.

One of my colleagues was bemused by the fact that a late running train on the Helensburgh Glasgow line described as “late” at Dalreoch, was suddenly listed as “cancelled”.

Further inquiries revealed that it was not uncommon practice for trains to make up time by the simple expedient of cutting out a raft of smaller stations despite the presence of commuters waiting on the platform. And despite these stops being timetabled.

Meanwhile people hoping to alight at these stations were advised to leave the train earlier and make alternative arrangements.

This does not qualify as customer service.

Scotland is in the happy position of having one train company rather than a raft of them.

It makes it very much easier to contemplate taking the service into public ownership, running an integrated show, and operating for the convenience of Scottish customers rather than Dutch shareholders and travellers.