On the first week under Labour’s new ownership, I journeyed with South Western Railways (SWR) from Staines in Surrey to London Waterloo on what was scheduled to be a nice and simple 42 minute journey.

What unfolded was anything but that. After arriving at platform two, a guard said we had to make our way to platform one, where a train was waiting. Upon crossing the bridge, a 10-minute wait and a lot of confusion, all of us passengers were told to go back to platform two, where there would be a “delayed service”.

Not the ideal start, as one man jestered: “At least we are getting our morning exercise.”

After four other trains passed through the station – including a freight train and one that stopped at the platform before speeding off without even opening its doors – our train finally arrived 15 minutes after the expected departure time.

In a bid to cheer up disgruntled spirits, the guard announced: “Your 5.37am service is here, the one you’ve all been waiting for.”

However, the drama was far from over. The guard “apologised for the delay to our mornings” but then had to upset passengers even more.

The delayed train would now miss four stops on our journey. Richmond, Putney, Clapham Junction, and Vauxhall were instead bypassed as the renationalised carriages hurtled along from Twickenham to London Waterloo.

Somehow, I did not feel I was getting my staggering £21.80 worth, and the passengers around me didn’t either. A number of fellow train travellers jumped off changing at Twickenham in a bid to battle their way through to their final destination.

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Labour has stated that it “would love to be able” to promise lower train fares, but it cannot guarantee they will get cheaper under this wave of renationalisation.

The Tories piled pressure on Sir Keir Starmer’s Government to lower fares on renationalised railway lines, saying that Labour had “talked up the benefits of renationalisation for years, and they will now have to deliver on their promises of lower ticket prices”.

But after sprinting past dozens of glum would-be commuters along the all-but-ignored four South West London platforms, we finally arrived at London Waterloo.

Only eight minutes late, thanks to missing every other stop, it is certainly a journey I will not forget for a while.

And the first official SWR service departing from Woking at 5.36am on Sunday was arguably even worse.

As it set off on its Surbiton-bound journey, passengers were greeted not with a train conductor but by a rail replacement bus driver.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has called the renationalisation of SWR “a new dawn for our railways” as we “move away from 30 years of inefficiency, delayed services and failing passengers”.

But I’m not sure, for many commuters, platform chaos and rail replacement buses will cut it.