Northern reveals best times to travel over busy Christmas and New Year period as strikes set to cripple rail network

Northern says services are not expected to get back to normal until January 9 as strikes, engineering works and the Christmas shutdown play havoc with the timetable.

Passengers are being warned not to travel on Northern services on nine days over the holidays, including Christmas Eve, Boxing Day and much of the first week of January.

Disruption is also expected on 13 other days, including New Year’s Eve, with passengers being urged to check before they travel.

Tricia Williams, chief operating officer at Northern, said: “We hope this quick reference guide will make it easier for customers to make travel arrangements over the Christmas period.

“The main cause of the disruption remains industrial action by the RMT union and we can only apologise to our customers for the inconvenience it will cause to their journeys.”

It came after Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) members at 14 companies and Network Rail again walked out on Friday (December 16), crippling services across the country.

With the Government under growing pressure to offer better pay deals to end the disruption by Christmas, the RMT attended talks with rail minister Huw Merriman on Thursday (December 15).

Union boss Mick Lynch said there were “no new proposals on the table” but said there were “soundings-out” of possible solutions ahead of further talks with rail bosses.

“So we need some compromise on some of the conditions they’re putting on the offer and we’ll need an improvement in the pay offer. That is achievable, in my view,” he told Sky News.

“I know that there are some very simple steps that the employers and ourselves could take together to get a solution to this. That means a common-sense approach – both sides get into a position where there’s some commonly held positions.

“And I think we could do that in the next period. And if that is done very quickly, we can consider the industrial action going forward.”

Rail workers in England, Wales and Scotland will walk out again on Christmas Eve if there is no breakthrough.