Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder coming to you from beautiful Newcastle Station.

There is a gorgeous curve of sandstone and it's a real palace to the privilege of being able to get around by train.

And guess what? A week today, on Thursday the 30th of

March, you will be able to get around by train, as well as on Saturday the 1st of April. Engineering

Works accepted. That's because late on on Wednesday evening, the RMT union said they would call off their planned strike.

The union stresses that the dispute with 14 train operators is still very much live,

and the General Secretary of the Union, Mick Lynch, said that they would be seeking a fresh mandate for strike action in mid-May when the current mandate, which allows them to go on strike across the nation, runs out.

But this is undoubtedly very good news. It was welcomed swiftly by the Rail Delivery Group

representing those train operators and I dare say by passengers who are now very, very cheesed off

at the way that they have been messed around. The Office for National Statistics estimates that in the nine months since

rail strikes began, 2.5 million working days have been lost. UK hospitality says 2.5 billion

pounds has been lost to its businesses, pubs, restaurants and so on, simply because the number of people

that they would normally expect to handle in cities such as London over Christmas and so on

has been so hard hit. So it's been an immensely costly strike. Is it now over? I think it probably is. My sense from talking to the people inside the

negotiations is that actually not much has changed. The RMT union, of course, is involved or was involved

in two disputes, one with Network Rail,

the infrastructure provider who maintains the tracks and keeps most of the big stations running.

They actually put out an offer which included a pay uplift of 9.2% over two years, rather more than that for

poor paid, poorly paid workers, a really good discount travel scheme for rail workers' families,

and that was accepted very enthusiastically, 76% voted in favour, only 24% against on a very high turnout. So peace is

breaking out on that side. The separate dispute with 14 train operators, including LNERR here at

Newcastle, Avanti West Coast on the West Coast mainline, GWR between London, the West of England

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