The first of two 24-hour walkouts by drivers this week has closed most of the passenger railway system in Britain.

Trains are running where their operators are not in dispute with the unions, so that services are normal on c2c, Caledonian Sleeper, Merseyrail, South Western Railway (apart from Island Line) and Transport for Wales. ScotRail drivers are also booking on as usual, although there is disruption between Ladybank and Kirkcaldy because of a signal fault.

There are limited services on GWR, Greater Anglia (including Stansted Express) and LNER, but not all stations are being served and services are starting later and finishing earlier than usual.

Urban services such as London Overground, London Underground, Docklands Light Railway, Tyne & Wear Metro and Merseyrail are unaffected, while Eurostar and other open access operators are also working normally.

Members of the drivers’ union ASLEF are staging pickets at stations and depots, while the relatively few driver members of the RMT are also joining the walkouts.

ASLEF had rejected the most recent pay proposal on 17 January, after a meeting with the new rail minister Huw Merriman eight days earlier.

General secretary Mick Whelan said: ‘It’s now clear to our members, and to the public, that this was never about reform or modernisation but an attempt to get hundreds of millions of pounds of productivity for a 20 per cent pay cut while taking away any hope of the union having any say in the future. Irreparable harm has been done to the integrity of the negotiating process and the future ability to negotiate an appropriate way forward, but we make ourselves available anyway.

‘Not only is the offer a real-terms pay cut, with inflation running north of 10 per cent, but it came with so many conditions attached that it was clearly unacceptable. They want to rip up our terms and conditions in return for a real-terms pay cut. It was clearly a rushed offer, made just before our meeting with the minister, and not one, it seems to me, that was designed to be accepted.’

The Rail Delivery Group said: ‘Having made an initial offer which would have taken average driver salaries from £60,000 to nearly £65,000, we had hoped the ASLEF leadership would engage constructively to move talks forward, rather than staging more unnecessary strikes. We can only apologise for the disruption.’

A second walkout has been called for Friday.