Rail passengers on all three of Great Britain's main north-south intercity lines face potential disruption this summer, with East Midlands Railway (EMR) cutting services due to train faults and drivers on LNER and Avanti West Coast balloting for strike action. The combination threatens widespread delays and overcrowding across the network at a time already strained by industrial relations issues and, in EMR's case, unresolved questions from a recent fatal crash involving its new trains.

EMR is cancelling around 20 fast services a day between London, Sheffield and Nottingham because of "performance and reliability issues" with its new Hitachi-built class 810 "Aurora" fleet, alongside poor maintenance of the older class 222 trains they were meant to replace. The Aurora fleet only entered service this year following a three-year delay, and one of the trains was involved in last month's fatal Bedford crash, still under investigation. Separately, the drivers' union Aslef has called a strike ballot at LNER after a pay deal agreed with the state-owned operator was reportedly blocked by the Department for Transport, following a similar ballot announced two weeks earlier at Avanti West Coast, raising the prospect of strikes on both lines by late August.