There's an advert doing the rounds at the moment for ScotRail which claims that your ticket goes much further than you think.

How much further it doesn’t specify but I’m tempted to put it to the test by buying a single to Stirling and going all the way to Inverness and see what happens.

I’m not sure the barrier staff in the Highland capital would accept my excuse or tell me how much further my ticket will actually go if it’s not here.

Of course the whole point of a ticket is that it allows you to travel from station A to station B and any confusion on the passenger’s side can be easily allayed by simply looking at the ticket.

If it says Edinburgh, then that’s how far you’re allowed to go so your ticket doesn’t actually go any further than you think at all as it’s set out clearly in black and white.

Sadly at this time, a rail ticket is fast becoming a lottery ticket due to severe disruption caused by train drivers withdrawing overtime working in a bitter dispute over pay.

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Drivers, who earn an average salary of around £52,000, were told not to work on rest days, which led ScotRail to slash around 600 services.

These were cut from a timetable that had already been slashed following nationalisation on April Fool’s day in 2022.

Then First minister Nicola Sturgeon (remember her?) hailed it as a momentous day for Scotland that would make trail travel far more attractive, particularly for the younger generation.

This might be true if youngsters secretly wanted to be sardines while standing up in a dangerously overcrowded train of an evening.

The chances of even getting wifi on a train are pretty slim so Ms Sturgeon’s boast, and not for the first time, ring pretty hollow.

Of course, if ticket prices were being reduced along with the obvious decline in service, then us weary passengers might just be able to stomach it.

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Instead, in a huge two-fingered salute to the public, fares were actually increased by 8.7% earlier this year, proving beyond reasonable doubt that ministers are just taking the mickey.

If this was a private company, such levels of incompetence would be met with the sack, but given this is a public body, no-one is being held accountable.

And so the merry-go-round of playing fast and loose with taxpayers’ money continues at a far greater speed than a ferry being built, the A9 being dualled or a train arrives at its destination.

Last week, the ridiculousness of it all came to a head when unions had the audacity to criticise ScotRail for running extra trains to golf’s Open Championship despite its temporary timetable.

This came shortly after having no services following the TRNSMT music festival which left concert goers floundering about Glasgow looking to get home.

The Open, of course, is a global event and is worth around £200million to the Scottish economy so the train operator is right to spare the country the embarrassment of having no trains.

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Unions should stop moaning and tell their members to get back to work, while ScotRail need to urgently recruit and train more drivers to ensure this can never happen again.

Ministers, for their part, need to get a grip on the company’s performance.

They were quick to remove the contract from Abellio, so maybe they should now step aside and let folk who know what they’re doing take over instead.

Someone like the Fat Controller. Thomas the Tank Engine and his chums were rarely late after all.