Strike Impact

Edinburg is in Texas! Edinburgh is in Scotland.

During rail strike days, there have been around 20% of trains running and on some lines, no trains all day. For those lines that have trains, services have been stopping around 5pm. Services are also affected the evening before strike days and the morning after. Buses are still operating.

It’s difficult to change plans, but travelling on strike days should be avoided.

Are you taking the train from London to Edinburgh? That may be affected by strike action.

Public transport doesn’t run a full service on 26th Dec (Boxing Day) and there are no tube or rail services operating to Heathrow. If you’re going into London get a taxi.

There are no Tube strikes planned for this period. The trains and the Tube are completely separate entities. The Tube will be running as normal.

Somewhat confusingly, The Elizabeth Line is a train not a tube so is affected by the strike and won’t be running on some days.

So in summary, getting around London will be fine. Getting to Edinburgh could be impacted.

The trains and the tube are basically separate things with a few exceptions.

There will be train strikes on Dec. 26, 27, and Jan 3 for your travel dates. The tube will be running. And contrary to an earlier post, the Piccadilly line will be operating on Dec 26 from Heathrow into London.

Postponing probably won't help. The rail unions have voted to continue strikes well into the spring

If you were planning to travel between London and Edinburgh via train on either Dec 26, 27 or Jan 3, then more than likely your train will be cancelled. You might want to make alternate arrangements.

Thanks everyone. We 'd been planning to go to Edinburgh (not Edinburg!) on December 30 and come back the afternoon of January 1 so it sounds like we'll miss the rail strikes there, though we fly out the 3rd so we may have to take a cab back to Heathrow.

After reading the above posts I'm not too worried about getting around London--we can always take buses as well. But my partner is a bit of an anxious flyer and she's worried about being stuck on the tarmac at Heathrow or having to wait in an hours-long line to get out of the airport. Do any of you have a sense of how things are moving along with the Border Force strike? We have biometric passports and can use the e-gates, but obviously if we're all sitting on the plane for hours that doesn't help.

Thanks all! I appreciate the help.

Thank you.
To the London folks-
Thank you. I’ve only been to London once and am not extremely familiar with the strikes. Thank you for all advice.
We are planning on taking a LNER train from London to Edinburgh on January 29th. I’ve already purchased the tickets on line. If you were me- what is your advice? Should I wait and see? Or maybe purchase a flight from London to Edinburgh? Thanks in advance.

Passport Control at Heathrow has to be one of the bright spots of travel with the e gates. I can’t think of a time it has taken more than 5-10 minutes once I have arrived at the border control area.