One fifth of trains to run in strike ‘but only travel if necessary’

More trains than ever will run during the national rail strikes tomorrow and on Saturday — but passengers are still advised to only travel if “absolutely necessary”.

About 4,300 trains will run — about 20 per cent of normal — with some direct links between London and the rest of the UK in place until mid-afternoon.

However, parts of the country will have no services — with Thameslink and Southern saying there will be few if any trains in south London.

The strikes will affect music fans heading to the Coldplay concert at Wembley and the All Points East festival in Victoria Park on Saturday, as well as West Ham’s Europa Conference League match tomorrow evening.

There will be knock-on impacts into Friday, when a 24-hour Tube strike will bring the London Underground to a near standstill.

Mayor Sadiq Khan has appealed to the RMT union, which called the Tube strike in an ongoing row over pensions and working conditions amid the loss of up to 600 station staff posts, not to “punish Londoners” and work with City Hall to secure a long-term funding deal for Transport for London.

The last Edinburgh train will leave the capital at 2pm tomorrow. Services to Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester will run until after 3pm and to Bristol until just after 5pm, with the last Brighton train leaving at 5.50pm.

Members of the RMT and TSSA unions working for Network Rail and 19 rail companies are taking action over pay and job security.

The firms affected include the London Overground, Avanti West Coast, c2c, Chiltern Railways, Greater Anglia, Great Western Railway, GTR (including Gatwick Express), LNER, London Northwestern, Southeastern, South Western Railway, Heathrow Express and Stansted Express.

South Western Railway said “significant parts” of its network would closed all day, including most routes to the South Coast.

On the strike days, it will run four trains an hour between Waterloo and Windsor & Eton Riverside, two semi-fast trains per hour between Waterloo and Basingstoke, four trains per hour between Waterloo and Woking and two fast trains per hour between Waterloo and Southampton.

Andrew Haines, Network Rail chief executive, said: “It saddens me that we are again having to ask passengers to stay away from the railway for two days this week due to unnecessary strike action, when we should be helping them enjoy their summers.

“We’ll run as many services as we can on Thursday and Saturday, but it will only be around a fifth of the usual timetable, so please only travel if absolutely necessary and if you must travel, plan ahead and check when your last train will be.”

Network Rail says it has made a “good and fair offer” of about eight per cent over two years – with lower paid staff offered 13 per cent – in return for reform of working practices.

But the RMT’s executive has refused to allow its members to vote on the offer, leading rail chiefs to believe the union is set on a protracted dispute. There have been three RMT walkouts in June and one last month. Last Saturday Aslef drivers went on strike.

TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes said: “Our members are going into the third or fourth year of a pay freeze. This dispute is not going away. We will not back down until our members have won the pay, conditions and job security they deserve.”