Towns and cities to be cut off during RMT rail strike despite some staff rejecting walkout

Despite staff at the UK’s largest rail operator continuing to work this week during the train strike, the company will only able to run just 20% of its services.

Govia Thameslink Railway, which is comprised of Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern and the Gatwick Express is planning to run a significantly reduced service.

It’s warning passengers to only travel if absolutely necessary during three days of industrial action, organised by the RMT union in a dispute over pay and job losses, on June 21st, 23rd and 25th

While GTRs staff voted for action short of a strike (meaning their members will still be at work) the fact that Network Rail employees such as signallers won’t be at their posts will have a huge impact.

“Sadly, we're asking people not to travel by train unless it's absolutely necessary.  During the whole period, the 21st to the 26th of June, we'll be running far, far fewer trains with lots of routes actually entirely closed. Trains will only be running on the Brighton mainline” said Chris Fowler, Southern Rail’s customer services director.

“We're using the route that Network Rail is able to make available to us and say that they can they can maintain, but that will leave us with trains starting much later and finishing much earlier.  The last trains would be leaving in the mid-to-late afternoon between five and 6:30pm and those last trains we expect to be busy.”

Dorset will see no train services at all and costal towns will also be cut off with operators planning to run a limited number of routes from a limited number of stations.

Service disruption - what's happening on your route?

Four trains per hour will be running between Brighton and London Victoria / London Bridge and two trains and hour between Brighton and Hove.

On non-strike days, around 60% of the timetable is planned to run, with services running to a Sunday schedule with no trains before 7:15am with trains out of place.

Back in 2016, a previous dispute between the RMT union and Southern Rail, over changes to the role of the guard led to disruption for passengers.

Chris Fowler says the impact will be worse this time, even though GTR staff rejected industrial action,

“Our staff are not on strike, but because we use the track that's owned and operated by Network Rail, we will actually be running, in some instances, far fewer trains than we did during the previous strikes.

“We always want to run as many trains as we can. And so I really apologise to our customers that we can't do any more than we are doing.

“It takes probably more planning to put on one of these reduced service schedules than it does for the full timetable. We've been doing everything that we can to run as many trains as we can for people.”