Rail strike will disrupt travel

TRAIN services will be disrupted from 19.00 today until 8.00 on Friday morning as four unions have called strikes to protest at SNCF plans for change.

SNCF chief executive Guillaume Pepy said that he expected services to be "back up and running fully for the start of the Toussaint holiday" on Friday.

For regional TER services, around two out of three trains will run but timetables will be amended with services cancelled.

Travellers should contact their local station to get the amended timetable for the region.

In Ile-de-France: The RER A and E will run as normal, RER B near normal with Gare du Nord connections assured. RER C will see two trains out of three, as will RER D but connections at Paris-Lyon and Paris-Nord will be maintained.

The Paris-Nord service will run as normal, with a bus between Creil and Pontoise, but Saint-Lazare, Montparnasse, Lyon and Est services will face cuts.

Gare Saint-Lazare will have a maximum of two trains out of three; Gare Montparnasse one out of two except La Verrière-La Défense which has four trains out of five; Gare de Lyon one out of two. Gare de l'Est sees three trains out of five, but the T4 train-tram route is normal.

Normal service is expected on the Eurostar and Thalys routes to Germany, Switzerland and Italy and the TGV service will run at up to 70% capacity on lines to Paris. Provincial TGV services will be cut to six out of 10 while TGV Est will run as normal.

Provisional timetables see better than one in two intercité trains running - with traffic expected to be near normal on the Paris-Amiens, Paris-Saint-Quentin and Bordeaux-Nice lines but two trains out of three running on Paris-Rouen-Le Havre, Paris-Caen-Cherbourg, Paris-Nevers-Clermont Ferrand

Unions CFDT, CGT, Unsa et SUD-rail called the strike as a warning shot ahead of plans for major railways structural changes.

Get information on services on the SNCF website and click through to your region.