Southern Rail to run 60 extra trains over bonfire weekend in attempt to cope with strike

Strike action: Tens of thousands of people will struggle to travel to Lewes popular fireworks event on Saturday
Getty Images
Fiona Simpson2 November 2016

Southern rail has pledged to run 60 extra trains over bonfire weekend in a bid to ease travel chaos during a 48-hour staff walk-out.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union will strike from Friday as part of a long-running dispute over the role of conductors.

The additional services will run between Haywards Heath in Sussex and London Victoria from Friday morning.

Almost all of Southern's 156 stations will have either a train or bus service and there will be extra staff at stations.

But there will be a restricted service, with many routes having fewer trains, and on some routes there will be no trains at all.

There will be no rail service on Saturday to Lewes, where tens of thousands of people attend the town's popular annual bonfire, with Southern citing public safety for its decision.

Southern passenger services director Angie Doll said: "We're sorry to our passengers that we won't be able to provide a full service because of the RMT's pointless and wholly unjustified strike action.

"The union is causing yet further misery and disruption, which is having a material impact on people's work and family lives.

"We are moving forward and are operating hundreds of trains a day with the driver now operating the doors and a second fully trained person on board, so striking this week will achieve nothing except further hardship for passengers."

RMT leader Mick Cash said: "The Transport Select Committee has exposed the ongoing shambles that is Southern Rail and the blind eye that has been turned by the Government to gross mismanagement of this franchise on an industrial scale.

"The select committee called on the Government to engage in talks with the company and the union. That call has been ignored.”

Southern says moving conductors to a new role of on-board supervisor will improve services to passengers, with responsibility for closing train doors switching to drivers.

Southern services have been disrupted for months because of the dispute, staff shortages and other problems.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT