South West Trains said it would be running less than one in ten trains after members of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union announced a 48-hour strike starting at midnight last night after pay and conditions talks in London broke down.
The AA said there was little evidence of more traffic into London from the south-west this morning, indicating that many of the 350,000 people who travel on SWT trains have decided to stay at home rather than wait on freezing platforms in vain.
SWT said it only expected to run a fraction of its usual 1,700 daily trains and the managing director, Andrew Haines, admitted that services would be "awful". Up to 2,700 staff were expected to strike.
The action is affecting services across southern England, and especially those into London's busy Waterloo station. Striking union members will work as normal over the weekend but there is another 48-hour walkout scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday.
SWT laid on special bus services in some areas to replace trains. Around 2,400 seats were offered to season ticket holders at stations across Hampshire and Surrey. Some train services did run despite the strike but they were packed with commuters. Some commuters drove to stations served by other rail firms.
RMT has rejected a 7.6% pay increase over two years because it wants the deal to cover 18 months. SWT has paid its drivers 7.6% over 18 months but the company has stressed that this was linked to productivity gains.
SWT said the offer to the union was worth about 15% over three years because of a suggested cut in hours and a rise in line with inflation in year three.
The company claimed it had met the unions' pay demands in full and said the dispute now centred on a row over the disciplining of two union activists. One of these, a leading union member based in London, was downgraded from his job as a driver to other duties in a dispute SWT claimed was related to safety.
Picket lines were set up at many stations today, including Waterloo. Phil Bialyk, a regional official of the RMT, said support for the strike was solid. "We are more than pleased by the level of support," he said.
Meanwhile, Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, chairwoman of the Commons transport select committee, said the government had to get tough with rail firms.
She said: "The train operating companies, in comparative terms, are failing as badly as Railtrack. These companies cannot continue to stagger from problem to problem and expect their customers to put up with it."
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that rail firms should be told they would be stripped of their franchises if things did not improve.
