Stranded this Christmas

The festive period is already going to be difficult for a lot of travellers, writes Simon Calder. If the rail disputes aren't solved there'll be plenty of resolutions to stay clear of trains

- Simon Calder

Fortunately, I had checked ahead to see if the single-track, once-an-hour link between Hastings and Ashford in Kent was running normally. No, came back the answer: some trains are cancelled due to an unspecified shortage of something.

Even when no one is on strike, rail passengers are accustomed to a certain amount of business-as-usual disruption. So I preponed and bought a ticket to Rye (via Hastings) more hastily than I had expected with the intention of getting to Ashford from there instead.

On these brief days, an afternoon train can be an unexpected joy. The setting sun to the west is anointing the late autumnal hillsides of the North Downs. Trim deep green meadows are embroidered by trees of fiery gold. Bliss. Autumn leaves on the line permitting, I shall make a connection at the exotically named St Leonard's Warrior Square in about an hour. Which gives me time to worry about state of the nation's railway - and the people who travel on it, work on it and pay for it.

Unless your train adventures began in the 1980s or earlier, you will never have known a railway where travel plans are so vulnerable to strike after strike after strike. Eight days of national stoppages by the main rail union, the RMT, began on midsummer's day and since 21 June millions of journeys have been wrecked by walk-outs.

Over the next five weeks, barring a solution to the tangle of grievances among rail staff, workers will strike for a further eight days.

Besides the main dispute with Network Rail and 14 train operators, the RMT this week announced additional strikes by cleaners on the railway as well as security officers working for Eurostar. So complex has the picture of industrial action become that, when I talked to the union's general secretary, Mick Lynch, this week, both he and I struggled to recall exactly who was walking out when without consulting our notes.