Living in London has moulded me into one of those annoyingly self-righteous people who don't own a car. I may occasionally rent, but on the whole, public transport is good enough for me to manage. Its not so much about saving money, or saving the planet, its more about how I really hate driving.

This being the case, when I venture away from the bustling metropolis that is our capital city, I take the train. There's nothing more British than sailing majestically through the country side on a nation-spanning network of rails, within a powerful, proud, mechanical beast. At least not until mainland Europe got so much better at it than us...gits.

Of late, it seems that intercity (the purpose, not the model) trains have become vastly more crowded, with seas of embittered passengers lining the vestibule ends like a grumpy, somewhat uneven carpet - a sea of carpet, now there's a great mixed metaphor. I'd be tempted to say that this observation demonstrates how the Credit Crunch  and rising cost of fuel are making people cut back on the luxuries: staying in the UK for holidays, and dropping the family car for a family rail card. However, my observed rise in congestion coincides almost exactly with my being employed, so I now only really travel in and around peak times (even when I try to be clever and take Friday off to travel in the daytime, an ingenious idea, which it seems everyone else had too). Luckily, that was not the overriding point of this rant, so I shall move on.

My latest railway adventure was last Friday, and it was indeed an adventure, chock full of the excitement of watching the departures board patiently, hoping your choice of standing spot will be close enough to the unannounced platform to allow you to be first aboard, securing a space in the woefully inadequate luggage rack. A three hour journey into the wilderness of Northern England is ordinarily a scary prospect, but I was attending a friend's wedding, which was lovely, and a most worthy reason to stray from Southern Safety (pictures on Facebook, or possibly here, soon).

My reading matter for the trip was the eye-opening The Undercover Economist, one of a recent trend of Economics-lecture-as-entertainment type books. I was half expecting a poor cousin of the enourmously amusing Freakonomics (a fascinating and witty read that revealed many great truths and fallacies in the world, and made me far less likely to invest in property), instead I got something totally different; an accessible and humourous inside out look at economic principles, applied to simple real-life situations to show why everything seems so darned unfair. It explains why things cost what they do, that everything will work out in the end if left alone, and that governments will try their hardest to bugger that all up (despite being a necessary evil). Read it, and I guarantee you'll feel both slightly less miffed at the state of the country, slightly more miffed about the state of Cameroon, and a lot less likely to buy a large mocha-latte. But, I digress. We're back on the train.

One segment of the book described how products are often 'sabotaged' in order to sell more of the premium variation. An example of this was standard class on a train, designed to be sufficiently unpleasant that, if you can possibly afford it, you will go first class. As I was on a train, in standard class, at the time, I was shocked. I closed the book and sat there for a while with a glazed expression on my face, like I'd just been hit by, well, a train. But a train that was also a metaphor for hidden truth, a "Truth Train" if you will, much less funky than a "Soul Train", but on a nearby branch of the Intangible Mainline network.

Looking at the glum people sat at the end of the carriage by the toilets - feeling smug that I had pre-booked, paid less and got a seat - I realised why the open or on-the-day fare is so expensive. You're only going to sit on the floor once. After that, the few extra pounds for the far emptier first class won't seem like a waste of money.

I discussed this with the woman sat next to me. She said she would have gone to first class if the carriages weren't full of bodies, and that it is disgusting that they oversell trains like this. I resisted the urge to point out how much easier it is to get on the train via the door of the carriage you wish to sit in, rather than trapsing through the train, pushing past everyone who is making their way to their seat in a more efficient manner. I instead mumbled something about open tickets while secretly chiding myself for having a conversation about economics with a complete stranger.

I have several conclusions from the experience: always buy train tickets early. The product of the cost of a middle-aged woman's clothes and thickness of her makeup are inversely proportional to how much I'll agree with her views. Finally, rail companies have lots of clever tricks to part us from out hard earned money, but they'll still manage to screw it up along the way.