Great Western Coffee Shop

Nationalised rail going well in Scotland..............

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61497155

Last direct train from Mallaig to Glasgow leaves at 0603! The earliest ‘last train’ in record?

Just pips the 06:11 Swindon to Southampton Central.

What about the 00:30 Preston to Fort William?  ;)

That’s only a part-journey, and a sleeper service

It's quite posible that Scotland has reached this point a few weeks ahead of England.  There are a number of industrial action ballots being conducted by the various Unions at the moment

If we are serious about the climate emergency, then rail travel for both leisure and commuting needs to be encouraged, and car use discouraged.

This sort of thing will encourage driving. Commuters having purchased a car and paid the fixed costs of ownership may find that petrol costs compare favourably with train fares.

And for holiday travel, you can go out for the day, but can not get back !

The well reported problems at major airports SHOULD be a chance to encourage holidays in the UK. Instead look at this shambles.

Elsewhere on these fora we have seen the poor performance of GWR, and the withdrawal of alternative services once offered by SWR into traditional GWR territory.

Scotrail are now doing as badly.

Did you read the article? They’ve cut services as drivers are taking industrial action short of a strike & thus availability has reduced. Surely better to have a timetable thats guaranteed than one that has cancellations across every day?

I’ve travelled fairly extensively over the past few months, on many operators, and the pattern is clear.  Some operators are still running a much reduced service with few cancellations but I suspect could run many more most of the time, and some (like GWR) are almost back to normal service levels but tend to struggle with more cancellations, especially at weekends.

Which is the best option is open to debate.

If any operator has a similar ‘action short of a strike’ situation, then further temporary cuts will be likely.

00:15 Glasgow Queens Street to London Euston is even earlier ...


It's a full journey as far as the customer is concerned and we keep saying it's about customer experience!

This is what I’m very concerned about. I think we all know which way next week’s RMT ballot result is going to look like  :'(

Yes I did read the article. The average customer cares little if the problem is caused by industrial action, faulty trains, wind, rain or something else. They simply know that the railway is an unreliable mode of transport.

As are most modes right now - cf BA and Easyjet....Stagecoach buses

It would be an act of utter folly for the RMT to call the strike which they are clearly spoiling for - much of their leverage has traditionally been based on the ability to bring London to a halt - now, there is far more scope for people to work from home either as part of their routine or as a contingency, perhaps in exactly this type of circumstance - indeed it's now a significant part of the landscape.

What they will succeed in doing of course is preventing essential workers, particularly less well paid and other blue collar staff from getting to work - nurses and the like - and driving leisure travellers away from rail and back to the road.

If they want a summer of discontent, they'll get it, and it may well prove to be their swansong. There will be zero public sympathy and the Government will be very grateful for the distraction of a left wing Union stealing the headlines from their own disasters.

It's difficult to think of a more boneheaded, short sighted example of bad timing.........except perhaps for the Miners strike, and we all know how that finished.

Not just the miners strike, but does anyone remember Jack Dash, communist leader of the London dock workers
? Famous for strikes, and a believer that the nation could not manage without his members.

The result was the closure of the traditional London docks, with trade transferred to modern, non union, container ports.

That’s stretching the ‘rules’ too far, surely?  ;)

I am not sure you have demonstrated cause and effect here. The move to modern container ports was already happening and London did not have the space or transport links to make that work. 

Sort of feeling we're straying off topic from Scotrail  ???

Surely all the trains withdrawn are duplicates of others running between the same stations ?  ::)

Only insofar as it's chaos on Scotrail today, but the rest of the UK too shortly if the RMT have their way, to which others in the thread have alluded.

Indeed - there's a perfectly good train from Mallaig to Glasgow at 06:03 - what more do you want?


Seriously though, you can travel from Mallaig to Glasgow later in the day with a change of trains, rather than having to "overnight" in Mallaig off the Small Isles ferry - https://www.calmac.co.uk/article/2983/Small-Isles-Mallaig---Eigg---Muck---Rum---Canna . A high proportion of islanders using this service do not have cars on the mainland and public transport is key for them when they have to get to Fort William, Glasgow or beyond.

Perhaps a new topic - "Disruption on the rails" which covers all regions/lines/unions/infrastructure managers ::)

Perhaps worth waiting for the outcome of the RMT Ballot?

"Now is the summer of our Discontent" has a ring to it?  ;)

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/plans-being-drawn-up-in-effort-to-stave-off-chaos-of-biggest-rail-strike-in-mode/?fbclid=IwAR1TY6p_0GPTHtaZatsDOOD-vz2jp7vWV9uSfpk9UZXI_GqI5bQl-VHNTkU

Back to Scotrail - being discussed on BBC Breakfast now

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61542482?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

Pregnant woman catches Covid after being jammed onto packed train due to ScotRail cancellations (https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/pregnant-woman-catches-covid-after-27075003)

(The same link leads to a couple of other Scotrail-cuts stories.)