Rail travel around Great Britain will be severely disrupted again this weekend after the second 24-hour strike in three days started on Saturday morning.
Thousands of members of the RMT union working as train staff at 14 operators are on strike in the long-running dispute over pay and jobs.
Passengers have been urged to check before travel, with some operators advising to attempt to travel by train only if absolutely necessary.
Just under 50% of train services are expected to run in total, but with wide disparities in regions and operators.
With signallers not on strike, trains operated by transport authorities in Scotland and Wales and within London and Merseyside are running.
But some routes around England will be closed entirely, with all three nations of Great Britain affected by severely reduced cross-border services, particularly on LNER, and on Avanti to north Wales.
Other long-distance operators, including Avanti, GWR and East Midlands, will run hourly intercity services. CrossCountry, TransPennine, West Midlands, Northern and Chiltern will all cut trains back significantly from normal routes.
Some networks in the south are expected to be badly hit, with most stations on Southeastern closed, and South Western and Southern affected by engineering works. Only C2C and parts of Greater Anglia are expected to remain largely unaffected by the action.
Across the railway, disruption could persist early on Sunday. The industry body, the Rail Delivery Group, has urged passengers to check before they travel for updates.
The 14 train companies where staff are striking are: Avanti West Coast; C2C; Chiltern; CrossCountry; East Midlands Railway; GTR (Thameslink, Great Northern and Southern); Great Western Railway; Greater Anglia; LNER; West Midlands, including London Northwestern Railway; Northern; South Western Railway; Southeastern; and TransPennine Express.
Further strikes are scheduled by RMT train staff for 30 March and 1 April. The industry has urged the RMT to call off further strikes and put the 9% pay offer made by train operators to its members for a vote.
Network Rail is not currently facing strikes, with RMT members voting in a referendum on a pay offer, and the result due from Monday afternoon.
On Saturday, the RMT leader, Mick Lynch, said rail workers were not prepared to “swallow vast changes to their working conditions” for a “poor pay rise”.
Speaking on an RMT picket line at central London’s Euston station, he said: “We need a change in attitude. We’ve seen a bit of that in the health service and maybe in the teachers’ unions.
“The difference in that is there are no conditions, it’s new money – but our members are expected to swallow vast changes to their working conditions and they’re not prepared to do that to get a very modest, poor pay rise.
“In order to get something moving, they’ll have to take away some of the conditions they’ve put on this proposal, and we want some fresh money in the pay proposal, so we’ll see what happens next week.
“They’ve got 18 points they want us to concede on our members’ terms and conditions, their contract of employment, what they’re paid and how they’re rostered, how they do their work, what they get for sick pay, what they get for holiday pay, all sorts of things that are in a bundle, as you’d expect, they want to dilute.”
