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Britain’s worst-performing train company has hired a poet to soothe the tempers of its frustrated customers.

First Great Western, which operates services from Paddington to South Wales and the West Country, insisted yesterday that its decision to engage Sally Crabtree, a Cornish poet, to perform at selected stations over the next four days had nothing to do with its poor punctuality record, disclosed in The Times yesterday.

Crabtree, known in artistic circles as “the pink-wigged pocket Venus from Cornwall”, bravely caught a First Great Western train from Penzance yesterday in the hope that it would deliver her to Reading for her first platform performance this morning.

In the afternoon she will move on to Oxford, and later in the week she will set up her stall at Bath Spa, Bristol Temple Meads, Exeter St Davids, Barnstaple, Paignton and Plymouth.

Crabtree travels with a copper tree hung with a variety of objects. Customers are invited to pick one, and she will read or compose a poem appropriate to what they have chosen. She will take up her stance outside rush hours, so that poetry readings do not further interfere with an already vexed travelling environment.

First Group, which operates rail and bus companies across the country, said that hiring a poet was part of a longstanding programme to entertain customers waiting at stations; previous acts have included face painters, balloon modellers, bands and carol singers. “It’s part of our annual engagement with our public, and it’s meant to be fun,” a First Group spokesman said.

John Dryden said that the chief aim of poetry was to delight; Mussolini said that the first aim of trains was to run on time. There is little hope that the two tracks will converge this week.

Figures in this newspaper yesterday showed that only 75.6 per cent of First Great Western’s long-distance trains ran on time, against a national average of 85.2 per cent. The company has a target in its contract of 92 per cent punctuality on all its trains, but managed 68.3 per cent on its peak services.

The inheritors of Brunel’s Great Western Railway strongly denied accusations by the passenger group Travel-Watch, which passed its complaints on to Tom Harris, the Rail Minister, that it was not delivering on its franchise commitments.

Brian Cooke, chairman of Travel-Watch, acknowledged yesterday that he had had meetings with the rail company’s management, and that First Great Western had a strategy in place for improving service to its passengers.

Crabtree remained optimistic yesterday that her “Poetree” would be well received by customers waiting on platforms: “Like many writers and poets, famously W. H. Auden, I am inspired by the reasons for our rail journeys, the human connections and stories involved. We take the train for family visits, lovers’ meetings or farewells, or interviews for work, journeys that can change the course of our lives.”

After performing recently at the Venice Biennale, Crabtree said: “To be the first official Poet on the Platform is a dream come true.”

Commuter groups dismissed platform poetry as completely ridiculous. Susan Westlake, of the Oxford pressure group Ox Rail Action, said yesterday: “It made me laugh when I heard about this. If trains are delayed while this poet is performing, I don’t think passengers will be too impressed.”

E-mail your poem about trains and railways to books@thetimes.co.uk - we'll publish a selection of them on this page

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