Elizabeth Line- Drivers Strikes - Dates in February and March

Thanks for the heads up. Where is a good place to check on the status of this situation?

tfl.gov.uk/campaign/strikes

Thanks for the information!

Thank you, Ian! This is helpful.

It is now confirmed that no service at all will run on strike days from Reading and Heathrow to Paddington and across central London to Liverpool Street and Abbey Wood.
Use other routes for Heathrow.

A limited service will run from Liverpool Street High Level (National Rail platforms #16 and 17) to Shenfield between 7am and 6pm only- with crowd control measures in place and certain smaller stations not being served. You may be unable to board the train you wish to. Where possible use Greater Anglia services on this route.

This means that there will be a much reduced service to Slough (for Windsor and Eton Central)- just two GWR services an hour to and from Didcot Parkway, which can be expected to be very busy.

It will be a very good idea to use services from Waterloo to Windsor and Eton Riverside or the bus.

While TfL have not updated their website at the time of writing, the news media have reported within the last hour (since writing the above) that the first two strike days have been CANCELLED for a revised pay offer to be considered tomorrow (Wednesday).

The 8 and 10 March strike days are currently still on.

It remains to be seen whether services can be reinstated on Thursday, especially- or if this is too late.

UPDATED 26 FEBRUARY (at 0655)- Full Services have been reinstated for 27 February and 1 March.

The strikes set for 8 March and 10 March have been called off.

As background to all of this- MTR will cease to operate the Elizabeth line on 24 May (on behalf of Transport for London) , at which point it will hand over to a consortium of Go-Ahead Group, Tokyo Metro and Sumitomo Corporation.

According to TfL the strikes are suspended, not cancelled although news media are using the word cancelled.

The offer has been accepted by the Union's Executive Committee, but it is not immediately clear whether the offer also has to be agreed in a ballot of the personnel concerned. If the offer is not accepted in a ballot (if needed) then the strikes could be re-instated at very short notice if they are just suspended.

I suppose it's worth noting for visitors that (I don't think) any new rail strikes have gone ahead since the last election. There seems to be a willingness to negotiate on both sides to avert strikes that wasn't there before, so at least that may give visitors an idea of possible disruption to trains in the fairly immediate future.