PASSENGERS face a second day of significant disruption as ScotRail staff take strike action on Easter Sunday.

The rail operator said conductors are taking part in the industrial action in a bid to force an increase in overtime payments during the coronavirus pandemic.

ScotRail says the move comes “in the middle of the biggest financial crisis in its history”.

The first of six consecutive Sundays of walkouts organised by the RMT union took place last weekend, with several services on key routes to be cancelled again on Easter Sunday. There will, however, be limited bus services for key workers to University Hospital Hairmyres in East Kilbride, Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline and Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.

David Simpson, ScotRail operations director, said: “A strike about an increase in overtime pay in the middle of a global pandemic is wrong and is forcing many key workers to find alternative and much less convenient ways of travelling to work.

“The railway is in the middle of the biggest financial crisis in its history and the Government has made it clear there is no extra money available over and above the nearly half a billion pounds in emergency funding we have already received.

“The people who will suffer most because of this strike are those key workers who depend on trains to get into work to perform their life-saving duties.”

He added: “Rather than taking action that puts people off using the railway, we all need to work together to attract more passengers to our services and start getting money in the door again.”