RMT Strike

[whole diary]

[ChrisB]

From Chiltern

Further to my message to you earlier this week, the timetable that we will be running during next week's industrial action is now available on our website

Chiltern Railways is strongly advising customers to only travel if absolutely essential during the planned RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) industrial action taking place next week. 

We have taken this step due to the extremely limited expected availability of staff and rolling stock across the route as a result of the industrial action.

The RMT union has called strike action on Tuesday 21st, Thursday 23rd and Saturday 25th June. Due to signallers joining the strike we will not be able to have the fleet positioned overnight how we normally would, and as a result the service will be heavily impacted both on the strike days as well as on non-strike days. Our advice to customers to only travel is absolutely essential covers the whole week from Tuesday 21st June to Saturday 25th June inclusive.

The service will be extremely limited, with the following service pattern from Tuesday 21st June to Saturday 25th June;

Between London - Banbury: One train per hour in each direction
Between London - Aylesbury via High Wycombe: One train per hour in each direction
Between Aylesbury - Amersham: One train per hour in each direction (except Tuesday 21st June when there will be no service on this route)
Between Banbury - Birmingham: No trains in either direction
Between London - Oxford via Bicester Village: No trains in either direction
Between London – Aylesbury via Amersham: No trains in either direction.
The strike coincides with the planned weekday Network Rail engineering work outside Birmingham Moor Street between Monday 20th June – Thursday 23rd June. These works are going ahead, and consequently there will be no services between Birmingham Moor Street and Birmingham Snow Hill or Solihull during that time.

On strike days services will start much later and finish much earlier than normal. The service will start from around 0730, with morning trains not arriving in London until after 0900. In the afternoon, the last trains will be much earlier than normal, with the last trains from Marylebone running at the following times;

15:10 to Banbury
16:10 to Bicester North
16:45 to Aylesbury Vale Parkway via High Wycombe
The message to only travel if absolutely essential means that we strongly advise customers to seriously consider their journey and seek alternative methods of transport. In cases where rail travel is a necessity with no alternative, customers can check before they travel on the Chiltern Railways website (www.chilternrailways.co.uk) or app. 

I don't understand why they are only running the same very limited services *all Day* (yes, a longer day into the evening, it's the quantity of trains per hour) on the non-strike days - many other TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) are running close to a normal service on those days - albeit with a late start/early finish (which is totally understandable)

So I've asked the question....

[ChrisB]

The answer given to me is that with TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) that do their own in-house stock maintenance, rather than outsourcing it, that work will be affected on strike nights, thus the stock won't be available at the start of service on the shoulder days, and may cause a backlog that can't be cleared before the end of the strikes. Hence only having a similar amount of stock units available on any particular day meaning similar lkevels of service across the strike week.