If speed is the important thing remember that you can have your ticket delivered to your mobile phone too.

All you need is access to a printer (colour or black and white – either is fine) from the PC or Apple Mac that you’re making your purchase on.

When you’re on the train, show your self printed ticket to the train manager, in the normal way. He or she will scan and validate it. The same happens at the gates at Marylebone and Shrewsbury – your self-printed ticket will need to be manually scanned as it can’t be read by the barcode scanners on the gate.

Once your self-printed ticket has been validated it will automatically be cancelled, to prevent fraud.