Together with my wife and daughter, we were booked to travel on the subject service to Southampton on October 20.

Due to the late arrival of our train from Worcester Forgate Street, we arrived in Birmingham New Street Platform 10, at the time our CrossCountry Service to Southampton was scheduled to depart from platform 1A.

We hurriedly made our way across the station to Platform 1A, hoping we may still be able to board the CrossCountry train to Southampton.

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We arrived at platform 1A when departure of our train was imminent with doors already closing.

In the absence of any platform staff to consult, my wife decided we could not afford to miss this train and be left stranded on the platform, so she re-opened a carriage door, followed by two more.

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Each door she opened was the same, inside the vestibules we were confronted by a mass of humanity, staring at us with strained, anxious, stressed, pained stares, supporting each other from door to door, wall to wall, in chronic claustrophobic dangerous overcrowded conditions. Our chances of boarding this train looked impossible!

My wife however, having had experience of Asian rail commuting, decided that we were not going to be left stranded on the platform and pushed our three cases onto the carriage floor and into the carriage between the mass of human legs; then grabbing the hand rail put one foot inside on the floor of the carriage and began forcing herself into the mass of human misery, calling on me and our daughter to follow suit.

We likewise grabbed the handrail and pressed ourselves in until after several attempts, the door managed to scrape passed our backs and eventually click locked.

Is this how the rail company thinks they have the right to treat a fare paying customer? It would not be allowed on a bus. Thank heaven they do not run an airline!

We did not pay £350 to be treated and exploited like this, treated as nothing more than parcel traffic.

I am 86 years of age, and I can tell you without any exaggeration, that without any digital or communications aids that they have available at their fingertips today, in wartime conditions, the comfort and wellbeing of my mother and me, was better organised during an air raid at the time over London, in our evacuation train from Paddington to Stroud in 1941.

Staff have everything available at their fingertips today to be able to forecast passenger loadings and provision rolling stock accordingly. There is no excuse for this. It is gross inexcusable pure incompetence on the part of their staff.

Henry Harwood

Southampton