Is this the end of the line?

After a seemingly never-ending journey of cancellations, replacement bus services, and threatened industrial action, the moment has finally arrived when the trains don't run at all.

For some regular rail users, the strike may seem like the first thing that's turned up on time for months. And it could prompt many to turn their backs on the railway for good.

Since February 2000, when Arriva Trains Northern took over the franchise to run services in Yorkshire and the North-East, it has been a timetable of disasters for the company.

Within weeks of taking over the contract from previous operator MTL (who ominously went bankrupt), Arriva was faced with a demand by the national train drivers' union ASLEF that its members should work a shorter week.

That ultimatum caused Arriva a big problem. It had inherited from MTL an under-funded network which was operating with too few drivers and a shortage of rolling stock. When the reduced working hours came into force, Arriva faced such a chronic shortage of drivers that it was struggling to run its timetable.

Cancellations and delays increased dramatically, and passengers became frustrated at the lack of reliability.

The situation worsened when ASLEF members threatened to walk-out, claiming that drivers for other train operating firms were being paid up to £5,000 a year more to do the same job.

That dispute was eventually resolved when Arriva agreed to an 18 per cent pay rise and Christmas bonus for drivers, but the deal only aggrieved the firm's other employees - the latest being those represented by the RMT, including conductors, who are striking today.

Ticket office staff were the first to threaten to walk out, claiming staff at rival firms were earning 40 per cent more than them.

The TSSA union eventually came to an agreement with management, but the tone had been set and passengers were beginning to think a strike was inevitable.

While those disputes were going-on, the situation on the tracks was getting worse, reaching a low point in September last year.

Arriva was criticised on several occasions by the Strategic Rail Authority, and was forced to pay-out several multi-million pound fines for its poor performance. The firm's record of delays and cancellations has now cost Arriva £13million in just 12 months.

But it was the passengers who were the real victims.

In October, more than 1,000 services per week were axed and replaced with buses as the firm attempted to draw-up a more reliable timetable, fearful that it could lose its franchise because of the level of cancellations.

In fact, the SRA has now agreed new financial terms which should see Arriva complete the remaining 18 months of its current deal.

But the firm's reputation will take longer to recover from the damage. Councillor Mick Lyons, chairman of Metro - the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority, has been an unrepentant critic, and has repeatedly called for the SRA to take firmer action.

Just last week, he branded the company "appalling", and claimed the new timetable had not improved reliability.

He told the Telegraph & Argus: "Even with the emergency timetable in place our passengers still cannot rely on Arriva to get them to their destination on time. Furthermore, trains are still running without the correct number of units.

"Arriva is now telling us that even though we have agreed 1,000 trains less per week, they have no intention of running them to time or doing anything about running them to time."

Over the past 12 months, Ernie Preston, northern secretary of the Rail Passengers Committee, has frequently spoken out about Arriva's performance.

Today he said that he feared the consequences of the rail strike, and said it would inevitably force people away from the trains and back into their cars.

But he said it would be foolish to lay all the blame at the door of the firm, which has become a victim of a "badly integrated and under-funded" national railway network.

"Everything that we have seen over the last 18 months have been symptoms," he said. "They have caused a lot of grief for passengers, and disruption and inconvenience, but at the end of the day they have just been symptoms of an underlying malaise."

He said the privatisation of the railways, which saw the network split into a series of regional companies, had been implemented badly and that the franchise arrangements were flawed.

"Privatisation in itself wasn't wrong," he said. "The railways were privatised for 125 years before 1948 and if it hadn't been for private investors, we wouldn't have a railway.

"It was the way in which privatisation was carried out on the cheap by a Government which never believed at that time that there would be increased demand for rail services again."

Mr Preston also criticised the regulation of the railways, now the responsibility of the Strategic Rail Authority, which he said had forced companies to cut costs and services.

"Arriva still receives a subsidy to run its services, although it is much lower than what it was at the start of the franchise, and that is despite costs going up."

And he said the firm had faced a string of difficulties in the past year, including major engineering works at Leeds station which caused massive delays, the speed restrictions introduced after the Hatfield crash, and the problems besetting Railtrack.

But Mr Preston said some of the problems were simply due to a lack of long-term investment.

He said: "Arriva has no coaches to run any more trains or longer trains. Even if it did have any more coaches, there are too few slots on the timetable to run the additional trains, and the platforms are often not long enough to accommodate extra trains."

Mr Preston denied the railways have a bleak future, and pointed to the recently published long-term Strategic Rail Authority plan as a positive step forward.

It will see the scrapping of the franchise currently held by Arriva, which will be joined-up with services in Lancashire and Merseyside. A new long-distance trans-Pennine franchise will also be set-up and operated by a separate firm.

"The key is that these franchises are for 15 years, and that gives more opportunity to invest with confidence," Mr Preston said. "These decisions have now been taken, and it is up to everyone involved to try and make them work.