As the country braces itself for a new wave of rail strikes, beginning on Saturday, demoralised passengers in northern England and Wales may scarcely notice the difference.
An acute shortage of train drivers, and their refusal to work overtime, has blighted services on the TransPennine Express network since last December, and on Northern Trains since the start of the year. At Avanti West Coast, almost all of its 585 drivers stopped volunteering for overtime on July 30.
The scale of the disruption can be disclosed for the first time with the release of figures from the Office of Rail and Road, the regulator. Scheduled services have been cut by 71 per cent on the London-West Midlands line operated by Avanti, and by 42 per cent
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