The West Riding route out of Bradford Forster Square is an awkward fit for long-distance running, and this evening’s 1A45 does little to disguise it. Booked away at 17:16 for London King’s Cross, the service joins a network already under pressure as the peak begins to build.

Your responsibility today is the run as far as Leeds. Progress is likely to be stop-start, with conflicting moves and restrictive signals common on the approach. Time lost early will be hard to recover, and careful handling will be needed to avoid compounding delays already taking hold across the area.

It’s not a fast or glamorous stretch of the journey, more a case of coaxing the service forward one signal at a time, arriving into Leeds with most of the timetable intact and the train still pointing in the right direction, which at this time of day counts as a result.