Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Corder, once again at a railway station.

This time it is London Paddington, the terminus for the Great Western Line to South Wales, to Bristol, to Devon and Cornwall,

as well as the Heathrow Express, going to Britain's busiest airport, except not today, because here we are Wednesday the 5th of October and we've got

another very damaging rail strike. Members of Aslef, the train driver's union,

at 13 different train operators, are on strike.

They are basically wanting more pay.

It's as simple as that, nothing particularly complicated,

and therefore they have decided we are going to take strike action

as part of a very, very long and bitter dispute over pay. They basically just say,

loads of people are making loads of money out of the railways, except for the poor old workers in the front line

and we'd like a decent pay offer we've been offered 2% and that isn't enough the train drivers

have voted very very strongly to go on strike and they did last Saturday they were joined then by the

RMT Union and they have today and well let me talk you through what is

happening let's start here because it's quite a good example there are trains

running even for Great Western Railway even though that is one of the train

operators where drivers are on strike. I've travelled on a strike day with Great Western before,

and basically you get to trainer drivers. They're the people who train train drivers, and they are management. They're not on strike

and therefore they are operating those trains normally. But there's only one train an hour

each way between here and Bristol Temple Meads via Swindon and Bath. Across on the

Elizabeth line, well that is going normally to Reading and also to

Heathrow Airport. The Heathrow Express, which is actually run by GWR, isn't running at all, but at least people can get to the airport.

I've been up and about since the early hours looking at what else is happening and

...