I'm about to make a huge change to the way I travel to and from work and it has massive consequences for one particular train company.

For the last 19 months I've been liftsharing the first 44 miles of my journey from home to Garforth and from there switching to train for the final 10 minute trip into the city centre.  In a military style operation, I've co-ordinated shifts with my sharer so the whole process can be repeated in the afternoon for the ride home.

That has been the case for an average four days a week, with some trips entirely by train from home to office because of my lift not being available.

But - from Tuesday the liftshare will no longer be an option, because the person who owns the car I shared has jacked in their job in Bradford and is going back to university on Teesside to study to be a teacher.

That means the train will be taking the entire strain.  And I'm worried about that because I don't think Transpennie Express can deliver. 

As I'll now be handing over the best part of £3500 each year for the 'right' to commute from home to Leeds every day, I will be closely monitoring how the firm and its trains perform.  There's also one thing that's confusing me.  Having (as I now have had to ... believe me it wasn't for pleasure) studied the timetable, I'm left clueless as to why some trains cover the distance between Northallerton and Leeds in 55 minutes while others take one hour and six minutes.  The stopping pattern is the same; but on some journeys there's an inexplicable wait of up to 15 minutes at York.

Is this a loo break for the crew?  Or is this gap designed to allow them enough time to nip to Costa for an expresso?

This matter is annoying me already.  As much as York is beautiful, I don't want to have to waste as much as 30 minutes a day staring out of the window at the city's station while waiting for the train to get on with the rest of the journey.

I'm not particularly patient with trains nor some of the people who travel on them; so this could be hell for me.  I'd better load up my iPod with relaxing whale music.  I reckon I'm going to need it.