East Anglian Railways - Introduction

East Anglia, like so many areas of Great Britain, is a name that is well known but whose boundaries vary in definition. For this datafile, the boundaries have been drawn to take account of the railway map and the other regional datafiles. The area covered by the data is shown on the map and includes the whole of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, most of Essex and parts of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire.

Railway Development

The story of railways in East Anglia follows a similar pattern to other rural areas in the rest of the country. There were no coal mines to stimulate waggonways or early railways, but there was a well established network of navigable waterways. Few of these were canals as such, but rather navigable rivers and navigations, together with the waterways built as a result of the draining of the Fens. Although they were important carriers of agricultural products, they offered little competition to the railways in most areas. Similarly, there were stage and mail coaches in all areas, those on the Great North Road, now the A1, being some of the most important in the country.

Click on the map to see all regional railways

Although some acted as feeders for the railway, within a very short time most services were abandoned. By 1860, the basic network was established and most building after that date was infilling in sparsely populated farming areas. An exception was the opening of the Midland Railway from Bedford to St.Pancras in 1868. Much of the area was a stronghold of the Great Eastern Railway with the Great Northern, Midland and London & North Western to the west. Infiltration by these companies into East Anglia was very limited until the 1880s when the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway (M&GN) used smaller companies' lines and new construction to open a line from east of Leicester to the Norfolk coast. Although almost all of the M & GN line have now closed, the venture was quite successful in its time and brought much trade from the Midlands to Cromer, Sheringham, Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

The Railways Today

The present situation in the area is that the network as it remains is reasonably secure. All the commuter lines into London are now electrified, as are main line services to Norwich, Leeds and Glasgow. On the St Pancras intercity services are High Speed Trains whilst Diesel Turbo Express units have taken over most of the cross country routes from Norwich and Cambridge. Diesel units cover the less well used lines. A new line was constructed to provide a rail-link to Stanstead Airport, in 1990. A management change took place from April 1988 with the formation of Anglia region, covering the lines from Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street. This region took over some of the management previously carried out at York and aimed to provide more local control. With privatisation, although the lines became the responsibility of Railtrack, the services were franchised to several different companies:-

Anglia Railways - Norwich to London and local services in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Central Trains - Cross country services from Norwich and Cambridge.

Great Eastern - Commuter Services into Liverpool Street.

LTS Rail - Commuter Services into Fenchurch Street.

Thameslink - Commuter Services from Bedford to London and to the South Coast.

West Anglia and Great Northern (WAGN) - Services from Kings Lynn and Cambridge to London.

There is a considerable flow of container freight from Felixstowe operated by Freightliner.