Nothing beats first-hand experience when you are responsible for a major public service.

So tonight, while Parliament is in recess, I’m off on a five-day national rail tour, starting on the midnight sleeper from Paddington to Truro, then zigzagging from Cornwall across Britain to reach Inverness by Friday, and returning to London on Saturday via a few hours at the National Railway Museum at York, where the new Tornado steam engine may be making an appearance.

The Times has asked me to write a column on my travels, so here goes.

As a train user for much of my travel out of Central London, I know the main inter-city routes and southeast commuter services pretty well. My plan this week is to get to some of the lines and services I have rarely or never used, including provincial services and east-west lines, which are increasingly important to the national transport system for both passengers and freight.

Along the way I will be joined by local rail staff, MPs, journalists and members of rail user groups, who will not be slow to tell me what’s good and bad about their services. I’ll also doubtless hear what fellow passengers have to say.

I begin tomorrow in Truro – after falling out of the sleeper at 7am – with breakfast with Matthew Taylor, the Lib Dem MP, who was a friend at university before he became the youngest MP for about a decade. Then it’s up and down the Newquay branch line from Par with Dan Rogerson MP, another Lib Dem, and the local rail user group.

From Par I take the Cornish main line to Exeter, for a station tour and meeting with Devon passenger groups, then on to Yeovil, where David Laws MP is giving me a lift from Yeovil Junction on the London line to Yeovil Pen Mill on the cross-country line from Bristol so I can proceed south to Dorchester and Wareham.

Jim Knight, the Dorset MP meets me at Wareham for an hour’s trip on the preserved Swanage Railway, which is seeking a mainline connection. The evening takes me east to Southampton and Brighton, arriving just after 11pm if all goes according to plan, the only welcoming party being (I hope) a concierge at the hotel next to the station.

Wednesday’s itinerary is Brighton (starting at 5.30am) to Norwich, arriving at a more civilised 5.30pm for a station tour and meeting with local rail users before dinner with Charles Clarke.

I get to Norwich by a roundabout route along the Sussex and Kent coasts, joined at various stages by my fellow Transport Minister Paul Clark (MP for Gillingham), Norman Baker (MP for Lewes and the indefatigable Lib Dem transport spokesman) and Roger Gale (MP for North Thanet), so I can visit some of the towns which will later this year benefit from the new high-speed services to St Pancras.

A hop across the Thames on the Tilbury ferry from Gravesend takes me on the line to Shenfield (terminus for the east-west Crossrail line soon under construction) and Ipswich (for tea with Chris Mole MP), proceeding to Norwich via the provincial lines to Beccles and Lowestoft.

Thursday is another crack-of-dawn train, the 5.52am Norwich to Liverpool – an extraordinarily long cross-country service – which I leave at Peterborough, connecting through to Birmingham for a tour of New Street, one of the post-Beeching railway planning disasters of the 1960s soon, thankfully, to be replaced by a £500 million new station with twice the passenger capacity and facilities more fitting for a great city.

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