Anglia Land

In the week after Easter I spent a few days wandering around the railways of East Anglia, operated by the new One franchise.

Anglia is one of the first new style franchises; it includes the London-Norwich Inter-City line, the intensive commuter services at the London end, and rural branches radiating out of Norwich. A microcosm of the railways of Britain as a whole.

One Anglia is very much in a state of transition when it comes to rolling stock, much of which still wears the liveries to the two previous franchises, Great Eastern and Anglia. Most significantly for rail fans, ex-Virgin Trains class 90 locomotives and Mk3 coaches displaced by Virgin's plastic Pendolinos replace the veteran class 86 locomotives and Mk2 coaches inherited from the previous franchisee.

The 86s were supposed to gone at the end of last year, but this was the sight that greeted me on arrival at London's Liverpool Street station.

It appears that the class 90s availability is not what it should be, and at least two of the 40 year old 86s are still in traffic. Most of the old Mk2 coaches are still running as well; I only saw two Mk3 sets in traffic. I can only assume that Virgin had run them into the ground, and they need some attention before One Anglia can put them into service.

The main line also sees a large volume of freight, mostly container traffic through the port of Felixtowe, operated by Freightliner, the second largest post-privatisation freight operator. Their operational hub is Ipswich, where they lined up three of their ever-growing fleet of General Motors class 66 diesels for this photo.

North Norfolk is a world away from the bustle of the London commuter lines. The Sheringham branch is one of the more interesting DMU-worked branch lines; there's still some freight as far as North Walsham, and after reversal at Cromer, trains use the last short surviving part of the former Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway to reach the present terminus at Sheringham. The train is operated by One Anglia, but wears the predominantly green livery of Central Trains, another recent rolling stock swap, which has seen the former 150s transferred to Central Train's Birmingham commuter operations in exchange for 156s.

There are a lot more photos on my Fotopic Gallery.