Due to strike action being taken by The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) this week, there will be no trains running in Highland Perthshire from Tuesday until Saturday.
ScotRail and London North-Eastern Railway (LNER) have announced that they will be running reduced timetables from Tuesday, 13th of December until Saturday, 17th of December. Although ScotRail and LNER staff are not partaking in the strike action, due to many Network Rail Scotland Signallers and maintenance staff, who are in critical safety roles, being members of RMT, it will not be possible to keep all services operational on the strike days.
ScotRail Service Delivery Director, David Simpson, said: “It’s really disappointing to see more widespread disruption across the whole Great Britain rail network as a result of the dispute between Network Rail and the RMT at a time when we need to be encouraging more people back to the railway.
“For ScotRail, it’s going to mean that we won’t be able to operate the vast majority of our services between 13 and 17 December, which we know will be really frustrating for our customers.
“We’re advising customers to seek alternative means of transport and to only travel if they really need to on the days of strike action.
“Customers should check their journey in advance to make sure your train is running.”
The reduced timetable has meant that there will be no ScotRail services running across Highland Perthshire on these dates. LNER have confirmed that they will not be running any services north of Edinburgh. ScotRail has asked for people to only travel by train if necessary on these dates to avoid congestion.
Network Rail RMT members are currently voting on a pay offer, with the vote set to close today. Even if the pay offer is accepted and the strikes are called off, planned strikes will remain in place for the next forty-eight hours.
ScotRail passengers should also expect some travel disruption today and on Sunday, 18th of December.
To find out about what services will still be running on the strike days, visit https://www.scotrail.co.uk/plan-your-journey/timetables or https://www.lner.co.uk/travel-information/travelling-later/timetables/.