The National Rail Enquiries website has stopped working as commuters attempt to discover services that are running amid the biggest trains dispute for years. Passengers attempting to use the service to find out what trains are running during the rail strike are being shown a message stating: “500 Internal Server Error”.
Chiltern Railways, which runs services in and out of London Marylebone, has also apologised because its website has also now crashed. And in further travel headaches for passengers, signal failures between London Euston and Rugby, and London Paddington and Heathrow on Monday night, added to the chaos in the run-up to the strike.
A usually busy London Euston Station was almost deserted on Tuesday morning, with just a tiny fraction of the usual crowds of commuters present. Little more than two dozen people waited for a reduced number of trains during what would normally be rush hour. At Birmingham New Street, the station was quieter than a usual Tuesday morning rush, with travellers appearing to have either decided to work from home or found alternative ways to get to their desks.
Down on the platforms, the 7.34am service to Northampton, the next earliest train heading in the direction of London, was full, but passengers had all managed to get seats. Train marshals were also helping people plan any onward journeys.
RMT union pickets, who had been out since around 6am, were posted at all the main entrances to Birmingham New Street station, as well as outside the city’s eye-catching concrete signal box in nearby Navigation Street. Although none of those on the pickets was authorised to speak to media, the mood of members was upbeat.
There was some visible support from the public, with a handful of drivers beeping horns, however most people on their way to work in the city centre merely glanced at the picket lines before carrying on. Just 20 per cent of services are expected to run today, the first of three scheduled strikes this week.
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