Train managers at Chiltern Railways walked out on Saturday in the first of two 24-hour strikes tied to a disagreement over safety on the new £7 billion East West Rail project. The RMT union has a second walkout planned for 17 October if talks don't produce a deal.
The dispute centres on driver-only operation on the new Oxford–Milton Keynes route. The union says Chiltern won't guarantee a safety-critical second crew member onboard, and RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey has warned that running trains without one poses a real risk to both passengers and jobs. Chiltern, for its part, insists every East West Rail service will carry two staff — a driver plus a colleague handling tickets, assistance and passenger issues — and points out it has run trains with drivers controlling the doors for decades with the regulator's approval. The operator also says the plan creates more than 100 permanent new roles with no changes to existing ones.
For anyone travelling this month, the practical news is fairly reassuring: Chiltern says more than 93 per cent of its scheduled services will run on both strike Saturdays, with the normal number of trains in and out of London Marylebone. So unless your journey depends on a specific less-frequent service, you're likely to notice little difference — but it's worth checking before you set out, especially on the affected East West Rail section.
The strike is also the latest bump for a project that has already slipped. East West Rail was supposed to open over a year ago but has been held up by extra work at Winslow station and an earlier RMT dispute about drivers operating train doors. Once finished, the line will link Oxford and Cambridge by train directly for the first time in decades — a genuinely useful connection for visitors hopping between the two university cities, their museums and their surrounding countryside. The full route isn't expected to be complete until the mid to late 2030s, though, so anyone planning a trip in the next few years will still be changing or bussing between the two.
If you're day-tripping between London, Oxford, Bicester or the Buckinghamshire towns Chiltern serves, treat the two strike dates — the first Saturday just gone and 17 October — as days to double-check timetables rather than cancel plans. Weekend services on this route are busy with leisure travellers, so trains that do run could be busier than usual as people consolidate onto fewer departures.
Worth following if you've got a trip booked into or out of Marylebone this autumn: this story is as much about the future shape of the railway as it is about a weekend of disruption. — The Independent Travel
