Tooting taxis and no Greggs queue: Manchester calm as rail strikes begin

theguardian.com:

Assembling their picket line outside Manchester Piccadilly station at 6am on Tuesday, the striking rail workers wondered if they would receive a hostile reaction from those inconvenienced. But instead of abuse they received toots of support from passing buses and taxis, while cyclists rang their bells.

“Passengers who use our railways day in, day out support us. They know that most of us are not on the inflated wages you see thrown about by rightwing commentators and newspapers,” said Clayton Clive, the RMT branch secretary for Manchester. About 950 of his 1,500 members had downed tools for the day, he said, a turnout of 63%.

Inside the normally chaotic station, calm reigned. The handful of passengers who had arrived without getting the memo were sanguine – even the couple who by 8.30am had been waiting four and a half hours for a train to Wolverhampton.

Owen Fones and his girlfriend had been on holiday in Gran Canaria; their plane had landed in the middle of the night and the couple had found themselves stranded. They caught a taxi to Piccadilly and used the station wifi to catch up on Love Island on their iPad. “I haven’t got a clue what the strike is all about but I think it’s a load of rubbish,” said Fones.

Just seven trains an hour were due to depart from Manchester’s main station. Battle-weary veterans of the north of England’s railway service were amused to see that the train to Preston was still managing to run late despite it being the quietest day on the network in years. Outside, the impossible had happened: there was no queue at all for Manchester’s busiest branch of Greggs.

Vinod Gadiyar, from Rochdale, was waiting for a train to London. He said he did not support any strikes – “I am a doctor; we never go on