By Jon Gower BBC Wales Arts & Media Correspondent

The 0846 GMT departure from Cardiff Central railway station to Treforest on Thursday was a real case of poetry in motion - with three poets from the University of Glamorgan on board reading verse.

The poems will be featured on posters at stations throughout the Valley Lines network.

It is part of the University of Glamorgan's 10th anniversary celebration, highlighting the role the university plays in the community.

By the time the train - the specially refurbished and appropriately named 'University of Glamorgan' - reached Cardiff's Queen Street station, Meic Stephens was clearing his throat to make a poetic announcement, which turned out to be the title of a poem:

"Your attention, please, This train is about to leave for a more fabulous world:

Calling at Shangri-la, Asgard, Camelot, Annwn and Xanadu,

Tir na Nog, Lilliput, Cockaigne, Valhalla and Estotiland

With connections for Narnia, Avalon, Hyperborea and Blefuscu;

Passengers for El Dorado, Coromandel and Moominland

Are requested to remain in their seats and dream on�"

There were two other poets declaiming their verse in between stops, or in this case, full stops.

Tony Curtis, the Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan - and a keen golfer to boot - had a timely poem to read as the train sped through the landscape of early autumn.

It is called "Late Fall":-

This year the later fall,

a surprising November,

and each round tales longer

-the walk from green to tee,

the crossing of the fairways,

the rain-flattened rough -

for each fallen maple leaf,

damp-curled, face down,

needs to be turned over, spread

so that it shines - brown

and bronze, black and grey,

orange and red.

Some passengers were bemused, others captivated.

One of them, Danny Saunders, who's been travelling on the train for over twenty years thought it was the most exciting thing that's happened since he first started travelling on the line.

Other on-board offerings came from Cardiff poet Matthew Francis, author of last year's prize-winning collection 'Dragons.'

His 'Invocation' hovered around a single letter of the alphabet.

"Wide wet walks where winds worry

weedgrown web-woven wilderness,

wormy warrens, whiffling waters,

wolf way, witch world, wound

widdershins with whippy willows.

Wittering with whirligig wings,

we want witness words. We waver,

wheedling, weighing, wondering.

Welcome what we whisper,

wild wood, wild wood."

The idea of using transport to promote poetry isn't new.

'Poems on the Underground' in London, introduced a range of poets to millions of commuters.

The University of Glamorgan, in showing the works of the likes of Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Hooker and Christopher Meredith on platforms and waiting rooms might well find a ready audience.

It will also show that poets, like trains, work on lines.