Rail commuters will face a miserable autumn as interminable disputes drag on - Bill Carmichael

Meanwhile, the train drivers’ union Aslef will strike on September 1 and ban overtime on September 2.

If this isn’t bad enough, in addition staff on CrossCountry trains, which runs fast services linking York, Leeds, Wakefield and Sheffield, are striking on September 9.

In all if you have travel plans for work or leisure over the next few weeks you would be well advised to check if your scheduled services are running, and make alternative arrangements if not.

These disputes have been going on for so long now it is worth reminding ourselves what they are all about.

In short it is all about money, as these things often are.

With inflation stubbornly persisting at just under 10 per cent the unions claim that a pay rise should reflect the rising cost of living.

Mick Whelan, General Secretary of Aslef, says: “Our members, perfectly reasonably, want to be able to buy now what they could buy back in 2019.

He also claims train drivers “haven’t had a pay rise for four years”.

This might be so, but it ignores the fact that during the pandemic lockdowns, when there were not any passengers, no rail staff were laid off or had their pay docked, as workers in many other industries were.

Also, as Transport Minister Huw Merriman pointed out, the pay of train drivers has gone up by 39 per cent since 2011 - an average annual increase of more than three per cent during a time when inflation was at historically low levels.

The Rail Delivery Group, which represents the 14 train companies, has made an offer of a backdated pay rise for RMT members of 5 per cent for 2022, and Aslef members have rejected a pay rise of 4 per cent backdated for 2022, plus a further 4 per cent this year.

These offers are below inflation, but not by a huge amount. Surely, with a bit of compromise on both sides a deal can be reached?

One absolute eye-opener for me during this dispute was the discovery of some very high salaries for rail workers, particularly train drivers.

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) the average salary for rail workers in 2022 was £45,919 a year, although the unions argue that this figure is so high because it does not include cleaning staff, who are paid a lot less.

The ONS says the median pay for train drivers is just shy of a frankly astonishing £59,000 - not bad for driving a largely automated train equipped with the latest technology. We are not talking about shovelling coal into the boiler of an old steam train here.

And remember that is the median, so half of train drivers are paid more than this.

Of course most of the poor, put upon passengers of these trains won’t be paid anything near £59,000, and I wonder how they feel about comparatively well paid staff disrupting their day and causing untold inconvenience and misery in pursuit of even more money?

Well, I can only speak for myself, but this rail commuter is thoroughly cheesed off about these strikes. We are already paying through the nose, and the train services are notoriously unreliable and often so crowded it is impossible to even get a seat that you have paid for.

There is a bitter joke I have heard more than once on the packed Aire Valley services: “If they tried to transport cattle like this, animal rights activists would be chaining themselves to the train tracks.”

A 26-mile rail journey from Skipton to Leeds will cost you over £10 for a single, anytime ticket.

By way of comparison I recently took a train from Ferrara to Bologna in Italy, a longer journey in terms of distance, although it takes a shorter time because the trains are faster. The cost of a single ticket was seven euros - or less than £6.

When the strikes are on, thousands of commuters are forced to use buses, which are often even more unreliable than the trains, or use their cars, adding to traffic congestion and environmental pollution.

So here is a simple plea from one hard pressed commuter to the rail unions - accept the generous increase to your already handsome salaries, and get back to work.