Scottish rail travellers face five days of disruption

The latest round of rail strikes will severely reduce Scotland's train network until Sunday.

RMT members at Network Rail have rejected the latest pay offer meaning five days of disruption are under way.

The dispute does not involve ScotRail staff but means the train operator will only be able to run 12 routes across the central belt, Fife and the Borders.

There will be no service on all other ScotRail routes across Scotland until Sunday.

Many of the Network Rail staff taking part in the strike do safety-critical jobs which means it is not possible for ScotRail to run the majority of its services.   

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The RMT members at Network Rail will walk out on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday as part of a long running UK-wide dispute over pay with the track operator.  

ScotRail said its limited strike timetable is also operating on Thursday, a non-strike day, because Network Rail is unable to make all of its infrastructure available that day.

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David Simpson, ScotRail service delivery director, said:   "It's really disappointing to see more widespread disruption across the whole Great Britain rail network as a result of the dispute between Network Rail and the RMT at a time when we need to be encouraging more people back to the railway.

"For ScotRail, it's going to mean that we won't be able to operate the vast majority of our services between 13 and 17 December, which we know will be really frustrating for our customers.   

 "We're advising customers to seek alternative means of transport and to only travel if they really need to on the days of strike action."

A separate pay dispute between ScotRail and RMT members who work for the publicly-owned train firm was settled in November.

In addition, a deal with ScotRail drivers was also agreed earlier this year.

However, a fresh dispute over out of hours on-call shifts at the rail operator has started.

The TSSA union said dozens of its members, mainly train and station managers, will refuse to do out-of-hours "on-call duties" for six months from 24 December in a row over pay and conditions.

The union claimed the move would impact ScotRail's ability to deal with any incidents during unsociable hours and potentially causing train delays as a result.

Which ScotRail services are running?

ScotRail said the railway would only be operational between 07:30 and 18:30 Tuesday to Saturday.

The services that will run are:

Edinburgh - Glasgow via Falkirk High: Two trains per hour

Edinburgh - Helensburgh: Two trains per hour

Edinburgh - Glasgow via Shotts: One train per hour

Edinburgh - Cowdenbeath: Two trains per hour 

Edinburgh - Tweedbank: Two trains per hour 

Edinburgh - North Berwick: One train per hour 

Edinburgh - Larbert: One train per hour

Glasgow - Larbert: One train per hour 

Glasgow - Falkirk Grahamston: One train per hour 

Glasgow - Hamilton/Larkhall: Two trains per hour

Glasgow - Lanark: Two trains per hour

Milngavie - Springburn: Two trains per hour

Final services will depart well before 18:30, and customers are being urged to plan ahead to ensure they know when their last train will run.