With many hundreds of trains being cancelled even on a day with no strikes, rail passengers in Britain face the most relentless disruption to journeys in a lifetime.
Between Thursday 22 December and Sunday 8 January, The Independent calculates that up to a quarter of a million trains will not run as they would in normal times – as festive engineering work and staff shortage exacerbate the worst strike action since the 1980s.
The leading cause of disruption is the sustained series of strikes by members of the RMT union. In the past six months workers for Network Rail – the infrastructure provider – and around a dozen train operators have walked out on 12 days.
In addition, a planned RMT three-day strike in October was called off hours before it was due to begin; tens of thousands of trains did not run because they could not be reinstated.
The next strike, involving only Network Rail staff, begins at 6pm on Christmas Eve and continues to 6am on 27 December.
Even when it ends, many travellers will find their journeys impeded by planned engineering work.
In some locations this will continue until Monday 2 January – as the wind-down of train services begins ahead of the next round of RMT action. The strike will involve 48-hour walk-outs on 3-4 and 6-7 January. Sandwiched in the middle: a strike by train drivers belonging to the Aslef union, who are also engaged in a long and bitter dispute.
Assuming no further strikes are called, 8 January will see a gradual resumption of services with a full schedule theoretically in place from Monday 9 January
Even on non-strike days, an overtime ban by the RMT is exposing structural weaknesses in some train operators. Chiltern Railways has closed down its entire Midlands network until 9 January, while South Western Railway and West Midlands Trains are running vastly reduced schedules.
The scale of disruption is unprecedented. This is how it will play out each day.
Thursday 22 December
Rail passengers between London, the West Midlands, northwest England, north Wales and southern Scotland face delays and crowded trains. Avanti West Coast has cancelled at least 40 expresses to and from London Euston for Thursday, blaming a shortage of crew. Axed services include five each way between the capital and Manchester Piccadilly, and the same number to and from Liverpool Lime Street.
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