Rail strike to cause severe disruption across Great Britain on Saturday

theguardian.com:

Rail services around Great Britain will be severely disrupted on Saturday by the most widespread strike by train drivers since rail privatisation in 1996.

Members of the Aslef union will stop work for 24 hours at seven train operators, halting some parts of the network and leaving only a few trains running on some other lines.

The strike by drivers comes three days after a national strike by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), including Network Rail signallers and onboard crew at 14 train operators, shut down most services.

The strike coincides with the first weekend of the Commonwealth Games and the opening day of the new English football league season.

West Midlands Trains, which runs services to sporting venues around Birmingham, the host city of the Games, will have no services this Saturday due to the strike. However, strike action was called off at Chiltern Railways, which runs services between London and Birmingham, after Aslef agreed to rerun a strike ballot by its members rather than risk an injunction over objections to it.

No trains will run at all on Southeastern or most of London Overground. Only a few trains will run on Great Western, with no Heathrow Express or GWR services west of Bristol into Wales. LNER trains will be vastly reduced, especially via Leeds, and will not run north of Edinburgh. Only a few Greater Anglia services, and one Hull Trains service in each direction, will operate on Saturday.

Some disruption is expected to persist into the morning of Sunday 31 July, due to shift patterns and the knock-on effects of disruption.

The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), which speaks for train operators, said the strike would upset the plans of millions of passengers, particularly those