Passengers take the strain as train firms slash services for engineering works

Our travel correspondent sets out on a journey of discovery between Manchester and London

The juxtaposition on the concourse at Manchester Piccadilly station was unfortunate. Beside a poster warning of three weekends of rail chaos was the message: “Please walk.”

The intention is to persuade passengers not to run for trains. But surveying the strike action and staff shortages that have accompanied the predicted shutdowns on a busy summer Saturday, walking may not seem a bad alternative.

Horizons near and far are diminished this August. The bank holiday, or at least the traditional rail engineering works that accompany it, has arrived early this year. Over this weekend and the following two, the London hub of the West Coast Main Line, Euston station, is closed.

The repercussions ripple all the way to Glasgow, with thousands of rail travellers facing complicated and protracted journeys involved. Never has the North Wembley junction, which is the subject of the triple-weekend makeover, caused such a kerfuffle.

Virgin Trains, the long distance operator from London Euston to the West Midlands, northwest England, north Wales and Scotland, is urging passengers: “We highly recommend that you avoid travelling on these dates unless absolutely necessary.”

Looking at the “revised timetable” it is easy to see why. The normal three southbound trains an hour from Manchester shrink to one and a half. One runs reasonably swiftly to Milton Keynes Central, while the half meanders through the West Midlands and terminates at Rugby – taking far longer than the normal London train, even though the journey is 80 miles shorter.

Anyone aching to get north of Preston on Virgin Trains faced a long wait; Glasgow trains are beginning and ending in the Lancashire town, with poor connections from the south. And Chester-bound travellers who struggled as far as Crewe found their problems were merely beginning: they had to endure an hour on a rail replacement bus to reach the city.

The least-bad option to reach London from Manchester on a Saturday morning appeared to be on the Cleethorpes train: not all the way to the Lincolnshire resort, but as far as Sheffield, from where direct services to the capital were scheduled.

I was clearly not the only passenger to contemplate this option, as the four-coach train had standing room only. Some travellers had taken the advice of the train operator and booked seats. But due to what the guard described as “a late change of train” no seats showed reservations; after Stockport a few fellow passengers in what was probably either coach B or C turned feral.

Compared with the alternatives, though, the Transpennine Express seemed a good choice. “This weekend, we will be the only train company operating services between London and Birmingham,” warned Chiltern Railways. “We expect our services to be exceptionally busy.”

Change here: rail replacement options for travellers to and from London (Virgin Trains)

From Sheffield, I aspired to reach Chesterfield on the CrossCountry train, to survey the Derbyshire disarray resulting from a separate engineering project. The tracks and signalling around Derby are being dragged into the 21st century. But a driver shortage axed the Newcastle to Penzance service, just as crewing issues led to a Cardiff-London return trip being cancelled.

East Midlands Trains took me to Chesterfield, where some passengers were dismayed to discover that a rail ticket to Derby necessitated a trip on either a budget Megabus or the double-decker that normally shuttles between Glasgow and Ayr.

This weekend the only place from which you can reach Derby by train is Matlock, a windswept terminus beside the A6.

The southbound East Midlands train veered east to avoid Derby, and sped through Kettering at 100mph. It might usefully have paused to pick up a party of West Coast Main Line refugees brought by bus from Rugby.

Elsewhere in Northamptonshire, passengers were trundling south towards Hemel Hempstead, from where a coach shuttle was running to Stanmore – the top end of the Jubilee line of the London Underground, for the first time in living memory an important intercity transit point.

On reaching the capital, I walked up from St Pancras to Euston, where I took the Tube – the only kind of train running at the station – to Waterloo.

Britain’s busiest station was strangely quiet. Members of the RMT union were striking on Southwestern Railway (SWR) in a dispute over driver-only operation and the role of guards.

The union said: “The company made a mockery of agreed talks this week and sabotaged a process that could have reached agreement.” An SWR spokesperson countered: “We have guaranteed to roster a second person on all our trains and we have guaranteed terms and conditions.”

Rail strikes are not what they used to be in the 1980s, when the train drivers’ union, Aslef, could paralyse the nation. But services to Southampton and Portsmouth were approximately halved, with some smaller stations and branch lines seeing no trains nor even bus replacements.

Next weekend it is the turn of Northern Rail staff to stop work, while Notting Hill Carnivalgoers and Warrington Wolves fans hoping to reach the Rugby League Challenge Cup final at Wembley must find an alternative to Virgin Trains. And with the North Wembley overhaul stretching into September, it won’t be too long before those Christmas closures.