Image source, PA Media

We're pausing our live coverage of today's strike action by train drivers - here's what's been happening:

• Around 5,000 train drivers are staging a walk out today as part of the ongoing dispute between unions, rail companies and the government over pay
• Passengers are being hit with another day of travel disruption as members of Aslef in seven train companies take part in a 24-hour strike, with services likely to be still be affected tomorrow morning
• Affected operators are Arriva Rail London, Greater Anglia, Great Western, Hull Trains, LNER, Southeastern and West Midlands Trains, as well as London Overground services
• Relations between the government and rail unions worsened after Aslef chief Mick Whelan said Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was "lying" by saying the union was "dragging its feet in negotiations"
• Whelan, who described the strike as "solidly supported", later said Shapps "holds the key" to resolving the dispute, but the Department of Transport says such as suggestion is misleading

• Today's strike is not the last one set to disrupt travel plans as three more are scheduled for 13, 18 and 20 August.

Today's live page was brought to you by Jeremy Gahagan, Marita Moloney and Laura Gozzi.

Image source, Lee Blackman

Lee Blackman is travelling back to Manchester from London, where he attended the Lady Gaga concert last night.

He told the BBC of chaotic scenes on the train back: "Our original train got cancelled - not sure why. As soon as the new platform was announced everyone ran to the train, but when we got on it was bedlam, nobody was guiding anyone anywhere and the majority of seats were reserved."

"Nobody cared - it was a free-for-all. No health or safety procedures were followed either. A poor woman had a table reserved as she had two children with her and the people sat in her seats point blank refused to move."

"We are currently travelling stood between two carriages."

Image source, PA Media

Aslef's Mick Whelan has been sharing an update on today's walk out, describing the strike by train drivers as "solidly supported".

The union chief said this shows "the solidarity of our members and their determination not to be pushed around by Grant Shapps, the Department for Transport, and the train companies".

Whelan continued by saying workers are just looking for a pay rise in line with the increase in the cost of living and he hit out at the Transport Secretary again after earlier accusing him of "lying" about the ongoing negotiations.

"Shapps holds the key to this but, true to form, he is blustering and ducking and diving, and looking to blame everyone else, indeed, anyone else, for the problems he has created," Whelan said.

"He could solve this in an instant by allowing the train companies to come to the table with a sensible offer and negotiate with us."

As we reported earlier, the Department of Transport has responded to the union's calls by saying it is "extremely misleading" to suggest Shapps should get involved in the negotiations.

Image source, Jack Lucas

Sport fans travelling to their first matches of the Football League season have described convoluted journeys as a result of the rail strikes.

Jack Lucas travelled to watch his team Derby County, requiring two buses and a train to reach Pride Park stadium from his home in Kidderminster. The journey took around three times the length it would have done with the usual two trains.

"I was constantly texting my mum and girlfriend to make sure they knew where I was in case I got lost," he says with a laugh.

Rail workers on strike "picked the right day to do it," he says with an ironic tone.

"It does mess other people around," he says.

Judith Moritz
BBC North of England Correspondent, reporting from Leeds

This feels like a tale of two kinds of station.

Those like Folkestone in Kent which are closed, with no Southeastern trains running at all.

And those like Leeds, where I am, which seem very busy. That’s because some companies like Northern Rail are unaffected, so there are lots of trains operating.

But others, like LNER are running severely reduced services. Normally there would be two trains every hour between Leeds and London on the East Coast mainline.

Today there was one early this morning, and there won’t be another leaving for the capital until tomorrow morning.

We've been hearing how passengers have been contending with today's disruption, and for one man coming home from Europe, it has been a long week of travelling.

Tim Limbach, who has been on holidays with a group of 12 people, including his family, in Austria after flying via Munich last weekend.

As with the UK, the roads in Germany have been really busy with lots of delays since schools broke up for the summer.

Tim's trip was also affected by British Airways cancellations, and he had to rebook his initial flights through Salzburg to Munich, which meant it was a long drive to the resort he was staying in in Austria.

The group are travelling home today, and Tim spoke to the BBC ahead of departing from Munich.

"It's really challenging, I've arrived at the airport and I have to go through security but I've been told it's been quite quick, and then through the non-EU passport queue, which is long," he said.

He added that the children in the group are handling all the travel well and seem "unflappable" in the midst of the long drives and wait times.

"It's just us oldies who struggle a bit," he joked.

Image source, Stephen Glover

Stephen Glover is travelling with family and friends from Stafford to London to watch England's women play in Sunday's Euro 2022 football final.

He tells the BBC that all eight of them have had to cram into their van due to strike action affecting West Midlands Railway.

"The kids were looking forward to the rail journey," says Stephen. "It's all part of the experience."

He's sceptical of the justification for the industrial action, saying it's not only rail workers who have faced hard times recently.

Stephen says many owners of small businesses like himself are trying to recover from Covid, but have been "hit by all these days of strikes.

"I just think it’s not fair for all these businesses that have been hammered, to be hammered again," he adds.

Arthur Scargill, the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, is showing his solidarity with striking train drivers today on the picket line.

His first major strike took place in 1972 when he led an initial group of 400 Yorkshire miners on a picket of the Saltley Gate coal depot in Birmingham.

The 84-year-old, who led the NUM for two decades, was seen joining Aslef members outside Doncaster station in Yorkshire to show his support for their walk out today.

Scargill also appeared on the picket line, this time in Sheffield, alongside striking rail workers last month during three days of industrial action as part of the ongoing dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.

Image source, Getty Images

Mick Whelan, the general secretary of Aslef, has hit out at the transport secretary while speaking to the media from the picket line about today's industrial action.

Whelan accused Grant Shapps of lying about the ongoing negotiations between unions and rail companies and hit back at the transport secretary for saying Aslef was "dragging its feet in negotiations".

The union boss told Times Radio: "I would like Mr Shapps to get us out of this catch-22 situation that he misrepresents at every opportunity."

Now the Department of Transport has responded to Whelan's comments, saying it was "extremely misleading" to suggest Shapps should get involved in the negotiations.

A spokesperson said: "The union knows full well that negotiations over pay and working practices don't happen with the government, they happen with the employers of the people they represent. We once again urge union representatives to get back round the negotiating table."

Today's strike is not the last one set to disrupt summer plans for travellers across the country - three more are planned for Saturday 13, Thursday 18 and Saturday 20 August.

Aslef train drivers at nine rail companies will carry out industrial action on August 13, while Network Rail, as well as 14 other operators, will walk out on 18 and 20 August.

In addition, London Undeground staff will strike on 19 August.

Rail passengers are being hit with fresh disruption today due to a strike by around 5,000 train drivers.

Members of the Aslef union have taken to the picket line across Britain in a dispute over pay, affecting services run by seven operators.

Image source, PA Media

Image source, PA Media

Image source, PA Media

Image source, PA Media

Hitachi Rail workers are to strike for three days from tomorrow in a row over pay and conditions.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) whose jobs include maintenance, are in dispute over pay and issues including breaks, leave entitlement and shift length.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said members "know the value of their work and will not be short changed by Hitachi Rail".

"I congratulate our members on this strong industrial response and RMT will support further stoppages until they receive a just settlement," he said.

It is estimated that Hitachi Rail employs around 3,000 staff in the UK, including 700 at its Newton Aycliffe factory in Durham.

Trevor Bartlett, the leader of Dover City Council, told the BBC that although traffic in Dover has cleared up following last week's congestion, the problem isn't going to go away and is indeed "going to get worse with the introduction of the biometric passport checks".

These might "require every passenger to get out of their car, coach and lorry." The new measures, which should come into force next year, will likely have "a devastating impact on all the residents and businesses across Kent," says Bartlett.

Bartlett said he felt "dismay, desperation and anger" during last week's gridlock.

"Dover deserves better."

Image source, Mike Simpson

Ongoing disruption to rail services has meant many people around the country have seen their travel plans upended.

While lots have been forced to cancel plans, some have been determined to make their journey come what may.

Mike Simpson had been looking forward to seeing blues and rock band George Thorogood and the Destroyers at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall on Wednesday night.

On discovering that his train from his hometown Leicester to Nottingham was cancelled, the 54-year-old refused to be defeated - and decided to cycle the 33-mile journey instead.

"I got the exercise and fun of a big electric bike ride and managed to see the gig so it was a win-win," says Mike.

By train, the journey would have taken him around half an hour. Instead the journey, door to door, took five hours each way.

Read more here.

Image source, PA Media

Away from the railways, traffic on Britain's main roads is expected to be heavy again today after holidaymakers were hit with congestion yesterday.

The AA put its first "amber traffic warning" in place yesterday, and this also is in effect from 11:00 to 15:00 BST today.

Major roads in south-east England were particularly affected yesterday due to a combination of the first switchover days for holiday lets during the school summer holidays in England and Wales.

The Commonwealth Games, the start of the Football League season in England, and the rail strike are also contributing to issues on the roads.

The AA says there is a high chance of traffic jams and delays across the country this weekend, with these expected to be worse in:

• Port of Dover and the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone
• Devon and Cornwall using the M5, A303 and A30
• The south west and western sections of the M25, the Bristol M4/M5 junction, M6, M42, M1 and M62

David Sidebottom, the director of travel watchdog Transport Focus, has told the BBC that passengers want the unions and trade operators to "sort out" the ongoing disruption, noting that there's another strike planned for next weekend and more to come in August.

Sidebottom warns that, if industrial action persists, people might eventually stop thinking of trains as a reliable way to get around, particularly for leisure journeys. "That will be the legacy of these strikes: people will find alternatives" and turn to cars, planes or other means to get to their destinations.

"In the long term, that is going to damage the railways," he says.

Mark and Fiona are a couple from Winchester who are due to travel to a wedding today.

"This will seriously affect our plans for travelling to a wedding in Kent. Now we have no choice but to drive, and there will be so much traffic," Fiona told the BBC.

"It's causing me a lot of anxiety and unnecessary stress," she added.

Her husband Mark said that three people due to sit on their table at the wedding cannot come as there are no trains for them - and they do not drive.

"These are the groom's work colleagues. It's really sad and makes me angry," said Mark. "It's unfair that the wedding plans are being spoiled at the last minute."

Long journey home for some travellers unaware of strikepublished at 10:42 British Summer Time 30 July 2022

10:42 BST 30 July 2022

Simon Jones
Reporting from Folkestone station in Kent

No trains from Southeastern, which is a rail company that operates services in within Kent, are running at all today.

Normally on a Saturday morning, this station would be really busy with people coming here as a tourist destination, but today it is eerily quiet.

There have been people arriving at the station not actually aware that there's a strike on, they hadn't seen advance notification of it even though there have been posters around the station, there has been a lot of talk about it in the media.

We spoke to one man who had just completed a 12-hour night shift as a care worker.

"It's a bit annoying, the next bus for me is in an hour, and then it's going to be another hour and a half," he said.

"I haven't slept a wink, I worked eight to eight, so I don't even know where I'm going to go right now."

We also heard from a woman who arrived here wanting to buy a ticket in advance for next week only to find the ticket office itself was shut too.

"It's just so random, we can't really make any plans or of we do, they don't really work out, like today," she said.

Image source, PA Media

Peter Hendy, chairman of Network Rail, has given a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Telegraph today where he is warning what could happen if the industry is not modernised.

Unions have been in dispute with rail companies and the government over pay, jobs and conditions amid plans, as the Department of Transport has termed it, to bring the industry into the 21st century.

Hendy tells the paper, external that "you have to move with the times", saying that he can't bear "to be associated with an industry that becomes so out of date it becomes irrelevant".

He says that unless Britain's railway industry is modernised, it could enter a "managed decline" as it did 30 or 40 years ago, or else it could become obsolete in the same way as coal mines did.

Hendy adds that he is confident a resolution with unions will eventually be reached, saying: "A 100-year history shows that, however bad the dispute is, people do back to work."

Image source, Reuters

Writing in today's Times newspaper, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, says that today's industrial action brings a "whiff of the Seventies" and accuses union leaders of "holding a gun" to the government's head in the form of repeated national strikes.

"The 'Two Micks', Lynch of the RMT and Whelan of Aslef, are taking the taxpayer for a ride, but not in the way they are meant to, writes Shapps, accusing the unions of not being interested in discussing reforming working practices.

Yet, "despite the stonewalling, changes will be introduced regardless," Shapps says. The reforms he lists include freeing up ticket-office staff to help passengers on platforms instead of having them "twiddling their thumbs" in ticket offices, as well as replacing maintenance staff working on tracks - "a potentially fatal practice" - with hi-tech cameras and drones.

"If we don't reform our railway it will slowly die," Shapps says, adding: "This is not brinkmanship. We have to grip this situation and force it through necessary change. Mick Lynch can take pot shots at me as much as he likes. It doesn't change the facts."

"I'm not going to cave in," Shapps writes.