The great rail strike mystery

LAST Monday, I tried to travel to London on a train clearly shown on the official timetable displayed on the internet. I knew that the railways were recovering from strikes called off three days before, but I had travelled without much trouble on the same line the previous Saturday. So I thought I’d be all right. On several recent RMT actual strike days, the trains had, in fact, been rather good, fast and punctual.

I wasn’t all right. The timetabled train did not run. More interestingly, the departures board at my station did not even show it as cancelled, or delayed. It had been abolished by some mysterious power as if it had never been. So had the next one. I had to miss an important appointment.

And so the privatised railways of this country chalked up a new success in their secret (but increasingly obvious) mission to drive us all back into our cars. I can now say that the services on my line are actually better when an RMT strike is taking place, then when it is not. How do they do it?