New EMR Trains Bring a Bank Holiday Strike

East Midlands Railway will run one train an hour to London on Sunday and Monday after RMT staff walk out over faults on the new Class 810 fleet. The operator, run by Transport UK, has told customers to travel only if the trip is essential.

The walkout lands on the same Sunday that Network Rail shuts the East Coast Main Line into King’s Cross, pushing extra bodies onto already thin Midland Main Line trains.

One Train an Hour, and No Spare Buses

RMT members at EMR will strike from 00:01 BST on Sunday 30 August to 23:59 on Monday 31 August, the August bank holiday. Philippa Cresswell, EMR’s customer experience director, said the firm had already lost three Saturdays this month to the same dispute and was “very sorry for the impact this will have on August Bank Holiday plans.”

EMR has posted a significantly reduced timetable to and from London and warned that “it may not be possible to board your intended service.” Intercity trains start after 07:00 and finish before 19:00. There will be no rail replacement buses. Regional services keep running.

https://x.com/EastMidRailway/status/2092285360369729716

Queues will form at London St Pancras International and at Sheffield. Staff will control boarding. The BBC reported the same warning on 25 August: essential travel only, and a real chance of being left on the platform.

National Rail last updated that plan on 25 August. Further RMT dates on 16 and 17 September still have no published service plan.

The New Fleet That Arrived Three Years Late

This is not a pay round. The union has been in dispute since April over Hitachi Rail’s Class 810 Aurora trains, which entered passenger service in December 2025 after what EMR called a three-year delay. The 33 five-car bi-modes were meant to replace tired Class 222 Meridians on the London, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield corridor.

By 20 July the operator had already cut Intercity trains because the new units, and Hitachi’s upkeep of the old ones, could not hold a full timetable. Then-managing director Will Rogers said the Class 810 fleet’s performance had “fallen below the levels we and our customers expect,” and EMR put in a temporary reduced Intercity timetable from Monday, 20 July.

RAIL magazine reported that as of 21 July EMR had accepted 13 of 33 units, with only 10 available and six diagrammed each day. Three sat in maintenance, one was a spare, two were used only for training, and unit 810015 was in long-term store after a collision near Bedford. The units still cannot run in pairs in passenger service, so the ten-car formations EMR once hoped to start in spring have not arrived.

THE ROAD TO A BANK HOLIDAY WALKOUT

1. December 2025: First Class 810 Auroras enter passenger service after a three-year delay.
2. April 2026: RMT opens a dispute over faults on the new fleet.
3. 19 June 2026: Unit 810015 stops near Bedford after an Automatic Warning System fault; a following train hits it.
4. 20 July 2026: EMR cuts the Intercity timetable to match the trains it can actually run.
5. 1, 8 and 15 August 2026: RMT stages three Saturday strikes; action short of a strike continues on other days.
6. 30 and 31 August 2026: Forty-eight-hour bank holiday walkout, with London services at one an hour.
7. 1 September 2026: Planned lift from 87% to 92% of the full Intercity timetable, delayed by a day because Monday is a strike day.

Rogers left the company in late July. Interim managing director Neil Grabham later said the July cut had bought “greater operational stability” by matching the timetable to the trains on hand. That step-up now starts on Tuesday 1 September, the morning after the holiday.

What Staff Are Instructed to Refuse

RMT members have been told not to work a Class 810 if listed faults remain. The union wants the trains taken out of service until they run properly. Eddie Dempsey, the RMT general secretary, said EMR had been sending out trains that then needed a full auxiliary reset, leaving them with no active safety systems, including the driver’s usual link to the signaller.

The BBC has seen an EMR operational briefing on that Aux Off / Aux On reset. The process takes about 20 minutes and, the briefing says, brings a temporary loss of several safety-critical systems and “an increased risk of an uncontrolled evacuation.” RAIL reported a plan to shorten the reset to 11 or 12 minutes, which had not been signed off. The RMT said 16 trains needed a full reset this month; EMR said that had happened twice.

WHEN RMT STAFF WILL NOT WORK AN 810

• Air-con and heat: No heating, ventilation or air conditioning in any compartment, or a galley above 29.4C.
• Doors: Any internal or external door fault, including cab locks that jam and keys that snap.
• Toilets: Fewer than two working toilets, one of which must be the universal toilet.
• Fire cabinet: The fire reset cabinet must be reachable.
• Full reset: A train that needs the 20-minute auxiliary reset, during which several safety systems drop out.

RAIL’s fault list goes further: drivers struggling to hear the Automatic Warning System, unwanted full-service brake applications, faulty cab fire-escape bash bars, coupling faults that jump from one unit to another, air conditioning that “soaks” passengers, and cab heaters bought from high-street shops. Keir Chewings, an RMT organiser quoted by Derbyshire Live, said drivers had been working in 40C heat. John Watson, the union’s Midlands organiser, told the BBC the trains are “a lovely train” on a good day, “but there’s that many issues with them, they’re having more faults than they are good days.”

RMT is demanding that whilst these faults exist and until these trains are shown to be operating properly, they should be taken out of service.

Eddie Dempsey, RMT general secretary, union statement

The union confirmed in July that strikes over safety on EMR would go ahead unless the 810s were withdrawn. Dempsey later said representatives would stay in talks with EMR and with Hitachi.

King’s Cross Goes Dark on Sunday

Sunday’s squeeze is worse than a thin EMR timetable. Network Rail is closing most lines between London King’s Cross and Peterborough from 20:00 on Saturday 29 August until 08:00 on Monday 31 August for the £1.4 billion East Coast Digital Programme, the last tests before in-cab signalling replaces lineside lights. LNER trains will start and finish at Peterborough. Coaches will run Peterborough to Bedford, then Thameslink into St Pancras.

We have carefully planned this work to avoid the busiest times of the August bank holiday weekend, and where possible passengers may be able to avoid this disruption by travelling before or after Sunday 30 August.

Ricky Barsby, Network Rail head of access integration, East Coast Digital Programme

On Sunday only, LNER will run two return trains from Newcastle to Bedford so about 2,500 people can stay on rails for the whole trip, then change to Thameslink. Network Rail told East Coast passengers heading for central London not to divert via Sheffield and Chesterfield, because CrossCountry and EMR on that corridor will already be extremely busy. Grand Central will run nothing on Sunday. Hull Trains will use a reduced St Pancras pattern and skip several usual stops.

St Pancras cannot easily swallow that overflow. Lift work means there is no step-free access to or from the Thameslink platforms, which is a hard cut for anyone coming off a replacement coach with cases. EMR, which will be on one train an hour with no buses of its own, has already said Sheffield and Nottingham stations will be very busy and that boarding queues will be in place.

Travel editor Simon Calder wrote on 25 August that the weekend looked tricky for north-south intercity travellers, with Avanti West Coast and CrossCountry also shutting some routes. The Midland line into St Pancras is the remaining trunk, and it is the one on strike.

Hitachi Still Calls the Trains Safe

EMR’s line has not moved. The Class 810s entered service after testing and regulatory approval, Cresswell has said, and “no safety-critical faults have been identified that prevent the trains from meeting regulatory requirements for passenger service.” The rollout will continue “in a controlled manner” through 2026 and 2027. The operator says it has met the RMT six times.

Hitachi, which builds the trains at Newton Aycliffe and maintains both the 810s and the remaining 222s, said in July that more than a third of the fleet had been delivered. A spokesperson said the firm was investing in extra testing at Porterbrook’s Long Marston Rail Innovation Centre. The first extra unit, 810020, arrived there on 30 July, RAIL reported, for work on heating, air conditioning, toilets, doors and pairing. In August Hitachi said an “agreed action plan” with EMR was “delivering progress,” including more maintenance on the old 222s.

THREE VERSIONS OF THE SAME FLEET

• RMT: Withdraw the 810s until toilets, doors, air-con and the 20-minute safety-system reset are fixed, and stop sending out trains likely to fail.
• EMR: The fleet meets the independent regulator’s tests; the problem is early reliability, which is why the timetable was cut and talks continue.
• Hitachi: Entry into service is still under way; Long Marston modifications and extra 222 maintenance are the path back to a full diagram.

Mayor of the East Midlands Claire Ward has already called the disruption “isn’t acceptable” and said people in the region deserved better. That political heat sits on a three-way industrial argument, not a simple Sunday roster gap.

One Aurora Sits in Store After Bedford

The union’s safety case hardened after 19 June, though the dispute itself is older. At about 17:15 that Friday, EMR unit 810015, working the 15:50 Nottingham to St Pancras, came to an unexpected stop on the up fast line south of Bedford after a fault in its Automatic Warning System applied the brakes. The 16:40 Corby to St Pancras, a Class 360, passed a red signal and hit it from behind.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch’s preliminary report, covered by the BBC and Modern Railways, found the Corby train had been doing about 76 mph, braked nine seconds before impact, and hit at about 49 mph. Driver Shaun Burton, 60, who was in the moving train, was killed. 162 people were injured, 102 of them taken to hospital. Both trains were badly damaged and partly derailed. RAIB’s full report is still coming. British Transport Police and the Office of Rail and Road remain involved.

RMT has said the ballot over the 810s was separate from the Bedfordshire crash. The union’s demand is still withdrawal of the class until it “operates properly.” EMR has kept repeating that the fleet met the tests required for passenger service. Unit 810015 stays in store. That one parked set is the most visible leftover of a summer in which the new trains have been in the news for stopping, resetting and now emptying a bank holiday timetable.

Bank Holiday Tickets Can Move by Two Days

Anyone already holding a ticket is not stuck with Sunday or Monday. National Rail has published ticket flexibility and refund information that lets strike-day tickets run on nearby dates at no extra fare, except on Grand Central, Heathrow Express, Hull Trains and Lumo connections.

Tickets dated Sunday 30 August can be used on EMR and most connecting operators on Friday 28 August, Saturday 29 August, Tuesday 1 September or Wednesday 2 September. Monday 31 August tickets get the same window. Cancelled trains, or a choice not to travel, bring a full refund with no admin fee at the point of purchase. Advance check-in still matters: first and last trains are earlier and later than a normal bank holiday, and the National Rail journey planner was not yet showing the strike pattern when the bulletin was last updated on 25 August.

From Tuesday 1 September EMR says Intercity will rise from 87% to 92% of the full planned timetable, with five weekday and three weekend Sheffield trains put back, plus a smaller Nottingham restoration. The 16 and 17 September walkouts still have no timetable attached. Until those 810s hold a diagram without a 20-minute reset, the holiday crowd at St Pancras is paying for a fleet that was supposed to end this kind of weekend.