For the last fortnight, the Shropshire Star has been reporting on the problems of overcrowding on a train dubbed the “sardine express”. Yesterday, Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard called for operator Arriva Trains Wales to be made to put on a minimum number of carriages at peak times on its Shrewsbury to Birmingham International service after one customer fainted.

Reporter Ben Bentley hopped on board to see if the train can take the strain.

As the train pulls in, it doesn’t look good for the commuters. In one carriage a passenger’s face is whelked to the window; in another there is standing room only and passengers have to inch aside to allow new ones on.

Welcome aboard the “sardine express”. The Birmingham to Shrewsbury Arriva Trains Wales rush hour service has got regular Shropshire commuters hot under the collar – not least Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard, who has raised the issue in the Commons.

To be fair, as I board the carriage at Wolverhampton for the leg to Shrewsbury there are a handful seats free, but fewer than there are people standing up in the corridors for the hour-long journey. If this was musical chairs, there would be more losers than winners.

• What are your experiences of the so-called “sardine express” between Shrewsbury, Telford and Wolverhampton? E-mail your view here – and feel free to include mobile phone pictures or video.

Shropshirestar.com reader YT Cheung took this picture aboard the 7.51am service from Telford on February 23.

It means passengers are close in more ways than one and once you are on board you try to start a conversation with someone but end up talking to their armpit.

Looking for a seat in one carriage there’s no escaping the spectrum of human aromas that starts with stale fags, moves seamlessly on to body odour, then day-old Chanel No 5 and finishes with a bouquet of boozy breath. I decide not to sit next to the bloke drinking a can of Foster’s.

A train, to be fair, does not choose its passengers. On the other hand, passengers have no choice but to choose their train. And many of them are not happy.

One, Owen Phelps, a barrister’s clerk from Wellington, is a season ticket holder and travels to New Street every day.

“I pay £1,353 a year to travel on this train every day, morning and afternoon, and it’s absolutely packed every day,” he said.

“This is good – normally it’s even more packed. I normally call it ‘rats in a can’. You can sometimes see the sweat pouring down the walls. One morning I was travelling into Birmingham and it was that tight that at each stop I was getting off to let more people on. I got off at Wolverhampton and was told to stay off because I couldn’t get back on. I got out of the way to let someone on and they wouldn’t let me back on.”

Shrewsbury passenger Paul Clare, who works for the Highways Agency and commutes to Birmingham up to four times a week, has developed strategies to ensure he manages to get on the train.

“It’s always full – the 7.30, the 8.30,” he said. “Waiting on the station you predict if the door is going to open next to you. You develop tactics.”

However Jon Blunt, of Shrewsbury, remained upbeat. He said: “At least it’s on time. I find it’s fine generally but it’s crowded in the morning and it’s quite slow.”

But MP Mark Pritchard is so concerned he has raised the issue in the House of Commons. He is due to meet Transport Minister Sadiq Khan to discuss the matter further.

Arriva Trains Wales denies the train is unsafe. It says “rigorous measures” are in place to monitor overcrowding and that it has added 650 seats on the Shrewsbury to Birmingham corridor since December 2008.

Rebecca Fjelle, spokesman for the train company, said: “Arriva Trains Wales strives to constantly improve services across the whole of its network and is currently discussing the provision of further capacity during peak times with the Department for Transport.” Crowding may be even be viewed as a sign of success in the current climate. After all, it means people are using their chosen mode of public transport.

Most people put up with rush hour crowding because that’s what they expect. And anyway, the goal is to simply get home in time for tea. Passengers spend the hour-long journey blinkered on laptops, mobile phones, and listening to iPods. There are even examples of sleeping. Even sardines want to be alone sometimes. And at least I’m close enough to read the bloke-next-to-me’s copy of The Sun.

Next to a group of standing passengers huddled in the doorway of the corridor is a sign that baldly lists the things passengers are not allowed to do while on the train.

Among them is loitering. One dictionary definition of the term is given as “to linger aimlessly or as if aimless in or about a place”. That’s half a dozen of us loitering, then. It may be accidental loitering, or loitering according to unintentional circumstance, but either way there’s nothing to be done but loiter.

The sign runs down the things we shouldn’t be doing in Welsh too. In Welsh, the word loiter is given as “loeban”, but to be honest, loitering is loitering in any language. And, for the time being at least, we seem to be getting away with it.