Intercity rail travellers face potential disruption this summer across Great Britain’s three north-south mainlines, with drivers voting on strike action on two lines and timetables slashed on the other owing to malfunctioning trains.
East Midlands Railway announced it will cancel hundreds of services in the coming weeks from its intercity timetable on the Midland mainline, because of continued problems with its fleet of Hitachi trains.
The train drivers’ union Aslef has called a strike ballot on LNER, which runs trains between London and Scotland, after a pay deal fell through. Drivers are already voting whether to strike over pay at Avanti West Coast.
EMR is cancelling about 20 fast trains a day between London, Sheffield and Nottingham, while others will also be short-formed and are likely to be crowded. Its new class 810 fleet, previously labelled Auroras when their launch was heralded less than a year ago, have suffered from what EMR has called “performance and reliability issues”.
The operator also criticised Hitachi’s maintenance of the existing fleet that the Auroras were due to replace, the class 222 trains, which it said had “significantly impacted upon EMR’s ability to run a consistent intercity service”.
Will Rogers, the managing director of EMR, said: “The performance of the class 810 fleet has fallen below the levels we and our customers expect, and it is necessary to introduce a temporary reduced timetable while we work with the manufacturer, Hitachi Rail, to improve consistency in service.
“We are sorry for the significant disruption and inconvenience these issues have caused our customers, and we are committed to restoring the reliable service they rightly expect.”
A Hitachi Rail spokesperson said it continued to “work closely with all industry partners … implementing improvements and supporting the transition”.
The bi-mode trains, which run on diesel and electricity, have been introduced into service this year after a three-year delay.
Investigations into the fatal Bedford rail crash last month are still trying to ascertain what caused one of EMR’s new Aurora trains to stop on the mainline, apparently due to a fault with the automatic warning system, before being struck by another EMR train that had passed a red light.
Train drivers on the two other intercity mainlines running north from London could all be on strike by late August, after Aslef called a ballot on LNER on Friday.
Dave Calfe, the union’s general secretary, said: “The company’s failure to make a suitable offer is unacceptable and that’s why we are balloting our members for industrial action.”
The union said the Department for Transport had refused to sign off a pay deal agreed at the state-owned East Coast operator.
A DfT spokesperson said: “We have given LNER approval for a fair and affordable deal. We know how frustrating disruption can be for passengers and strongly encourage the union to continue engaging constructively with LNER to reach a solution.”
Two weeks ago Aslef announced a similar vote at Avanti West Coast over frustrated pay negotiations. The union has not renewed a rest-day working agreement, leading to some cancellations.
