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Monday 29 Mar 2010

RAIL TALKS RESTART AND CONTINGENCY PLANS OUTLINED

Region & Route:

National

Talks aimed at resolving the on-going rail dispute began again today at ACAS.

Robin Gisby, director of operations and customer services, said: "More talks are underway and we believe there is a settlement to be had.

"We can't bank on the union to call off the strike - despite ongoing talks, and so we are now concluding our contingency plans with full details available later this week."

Talks re-started at 11am and Network Rail will be making its negotiating team available all week in order to find a deal to prevent strike action.

With the extent and complexity of the times of the strike now apparent - times designed to cause maximum disruption to passengers by targeting the morning and evening peaks - Network Rail and the train operators have been working together on the detail of the plans over the weekend and will continue to fine tune these over the next few days. 

Full details of the timetables of what trains will run, when and where, will be available from Thursday with overviews and summaries available earlier.

Train services will be severely affected if this strike proceeds.  As an average across the country, only around 20% of passenger services are expected to run.  Passengers should check with individual operators for more detail as this overall picture masks some routes and operators who will be able to run a near normal service between 0700 and 1900 on the days of the strike.

Mr Gisby concluded: "Network Rail and the operators will do all we can to run as many trains as possible but people need to be aware that if this strike goes ahead, a lot of services will be severely hit."