Greater Anglia travel chaos, rail strikes by Northern Rail and SNFC staff

Thursday, May 10, 2018

It has been reported that the trains in northern England , across France and through the Channel Tunnel has been cancelled.

Due to the dispute about the role of guards the members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers(RMT) employed by the Northern and Greater Anglia walked out for 24 hours on Wednesday.

Railway passengers will be experiencing another day of cancellations and delays because of the strikes from Northumberland to the south of France. Further disruption might occur on the trains and planes over the weekend.

An emergency timetable has been issued by Northern which might see trains running between 7 am and 7pm lines from Nottingham to Newcastle and Crewe to Carlisle.

The train company mentioned that during these hours they will be operating around 65% of the normal weekday timetable. The overall number of trains running is expected to reduce and the trains and replacement buses will be busy.

One should plan carefully and consider if travel w as necessary. Contingency conductors have been deployed across the network and Greater Anglia services in Greater Anglia, Suffolk and Norfolk remains unaffected.

Jamie Burles,  train operator’s managing director said  he was disappointed that RMT was holding a further strike today.

Earlier there were some constructive talks with the RMT union official. A proposal was offered that might have resolved the issues but RMT rejected it.

He further mentioned that he highly valued his conductors and they want to keep them on the trains so that they can concentrate on customers services rather than just opening and closing doors.

RMT general secretary, Mick Cash said that they were able to reach agreements in Wales and Scotland on the guard guarantee, not on a raft of the key franchise in England. It is important for Wales and Scotland to put rail safety first which will eventually be good for the rest of the Britain.

The governments interference has been detected which stopped then from negotiating settlements in the current disputes. It was time for Chris Grayling to stop playing politics concerning the passenger safety and started taking the issue seriously.

The latest two-day strike by French Railway workers led to the cancellation of two round-trips from London St Pancras to Paris and a single return journey to Brussles.

Until the end of June the staff at SNFC will be staging 48 hours of industrial action every five days in a dispute over modernization plans.The inter-city services on the non-TVG lines are worst hit, around half the trains in France have been cancelled.Only one service in five is running on the line connecting Paris with Amiens and Boulogne.

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