Last Thursday I ended up on the 18.03 train from Birmingham New Street to Oxford with my daughter. We weren’t meant to be there. We were meant to be on the 8 carriage 17.03, but this, along with all of its seat reservations, was cancelled due to lack of train crew. The 18.03 had 4 carriages, so as we watched it roll into the station, each carriage full all the way down the aisles and also between them and the two of us both with big suitcases on the platform, my heart sank. There was no way we were getting on this train. Sure enough, when the train stopped, none of the queues at any of the doors seemed to be moving. It looked hopeless and the next train, for which there was no guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen again, was not for another hour.

Then something unexpected happened: two women who had managed to get on came back for us and engineered our way onto the train.

And so the worst train journey of my life began. I have been on trains all over Europe, including 16 hours travelling from Paris to Pisa with one seat for two people, but this one was in a different category altogether. Because the brilliant wheeze the two women had come up with which had created a space where none should rightly be was to occupy the Pendolino toilets.

There were 7 of us in there in all. The two lovely women, my daughter and I, another woman who I will call Queenie for reasons which will become clearer and two other men who I will call woolly hat and plastic jacket. We took it in turns to try and find a humorous take on our circumstances. The hand dryer’s irregular blowing was a great help here. We couldn’t work out which combination of timers, sensors or general boredom was driving this and the toilet flush for that matter, so that kept the conversation going for a while. But that wasn’t going to get us to Oxford.

There were doubts about whether the train was going to either, as it got more and more delayed. We arrived at the first station (Birmingham International) and the first of the regular pleas from the train guard – imprisoned at the first class end of the train as he was – came across the tannoy. We were apparently focused on the wrong problem, where we should have been focused on his problem, which was that of leaving people on the platforms due to his overloaded train. We needed to all get out of the toilet (actually I don’t think he knew we were in the toilet), off the train and onto the platform, so that more people could not claim against the train company under delay repay. Then we could take our chances trying to get back on board, when not even the toilet was available any more. You can imagine that we were unconvinced about what was in it for us in this scenario. A sense of solidarity and community was starting to build amongst the toiletistas by now.

There was another moment of drama when what sounded like an alarm went off, until I remembered that this was the technological triumph they had trumpeted back in the noughties for Pendolino trains. We were about to experience tilting toilets.

About two thirds of the way there we had another challenge. One man had been bold enough to squeeze his way in amongst the toiletistas and requested to use the facilities we had occupied. He said that his only request was that we all look the other way, and proceeded to keep up a steady stream of quips throughout the visit: “Not sure I can go with 150 people standing behind me”, “This may take a while as I am an older man” etc. He lost some of our sympathy when he announced he was going back to his reserved seat now.

At this point Queenie decided to close the toilet seat and sit on it. From the newly created throne of the toiletistas, she started tweeting “from the throne” which got us through Leamington Spa and Banbury. The only thing that was able to shift Queenie was another woman shuffling in and also asking to use the facilities. She had a whole load of additional demands however. Only women allowed in the toilet area for one. Closing the door was another. So we separated the men from the women, the men shuffled out and the women shuffled in.

By this time the guard had given up completely. He was talking darkly about how “sarky remarks and gestures were not appreciated”. We were losing toiletistas too. The lovely women left at Banbury. Another man arrived, with his mistress I think. He started complaining about property values and school fees and the unreasonableness of his wife in a kind of Hugh Bonneville drone which would have emptied the toilet republic far faster than the guard’s announcements ever could.

But for us the journey was over, finally rolling into Oxford around 7.30. We left the remaining toiletistas, bound for Southampton unfortunately, and headed out into the moonlit dreaming spires.

Crosscountry trains, the train operators responsible for all this are owned by Arriva UK Trains, who are themselves owned by Arriva, which is owned by Deutsche Bahn, the German nationalised railway. Remember this the next time the representative of the train operators tells you that nationalisation is the wrong answer as it is a political rather than a practical solution. Being nationalised from Berlin did not look all that practical from the toilet seat.