OVER the past five years as your MP, I have learned that the beginning and end of school holidays put maximum pressure on the family’s work/life balance.

In common with Like many working parents, I face a daily mountain of back-to-school tasks, increasingly grumpy children ready to get back to school/university and a growing list of work demands as my inbox swells with back-from-holiday correspondence and ministerial activities ramp up.

A word of apology to those waiting for a reply from me as my normal turnaround time for letters and emails has stretched recently due to some staff unplanned staff leave.

We have redoubled our efforts to get on top of the backlog and your reply should be with you shortly.

But I doubt that many workdays are quite as inspiring as the one I spent last week visiting the Network Rail engineering works at Bathhampton.

This is the biggest project in this area for decades and it is preparing a complicated bit of rail track for the electrification that will open up this route for the new Intercity Express fleet that will deliver far more reliable, state-of-the-art trains with 40 per cent more peak time seats on faster journeys into Paddington from 2018.

Mr Brunel could only have dreamed of this future technology when he planned and built the original line but last week I got a glimpse of the great man’s brilliance as I toured the works in detail.

I met the hundreds of men and women engaged on the track lowering and replacement works and – best of all – went through Box Tunnel on a railway people mover, slow enough to admire the huge scale of the space (twice as large as needed to accommodate Brunel’s broad gauges) hewn out of solid limestone with picks and dynamite, fitted out with millions of locally made bricks and with a soaring arch and pediment at the west end that would put much of modern architecture to shame.

I learned that the sun does indeed shine through it on one day a year (although not on Brunel’s birthday) and left with a real sense of pride to be part of a government that is driving this rail renaissance.

It is a pity that the rail union leaders have set their faces so firmly against these improvements, ignoring the fact that jobs in railways are being created all over Britain after decades of decline and continuing to call for strikes designed to maximise customer inconvenience.

I hope as the works come closer to completion a more reasonable attitude prevails from these campaigners.