That is what I thought but a ScotRail E-Mail in the November strikes include this statement:
"Disruption to ScotRail services will not be confined to the days of strike action and will also impact the day following each day of action – 6 November (Sunday), 8 November (Tuesday) and, 10 November (Thursday), caused by the closing and re-opening of signal boxes at different times throughout the day."
There are a few different disputes here, and strikes each have a slightly different impact:
Between the RMT and Network Rail: this means that signallers don't book on for shifts that start on the strike day, so services run normally up until the last train the night before the strike - but signal boxes don't reopen until around 7am the day after a strike, and so services start up later. On the strike days themselves, only a limited number of routes are open as they rely on contingency signallers.
Between the RMT and Department for Transport-controlled English operators: this means that contingency guards have to be used, which limits the number of services that can be run. Up until now, these have generally coincided with Network Rail strike dates, which has inherently limited the routes and hours of operation.
Between ASLEF and DfT-controlled English operators: when ASLEF go on strike, the operator in question generally won't run any service, as most operators don't have very many contingency drivers. ASLEF haven't gone on many strikes yet, and aren't in dispute with ScotRail currently.
Between the RMT and ScotRail: as above, this means that few services run, as contingency guards have to be used. But the RMT haven't coordinated strike action at the DfT-controlled English operators with strike action at ScotRail so far, so the disruption has been on different dates.
It's quite a confusing picture, as you can see!
