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National Express East Anglia is a train operating company and brand name of London Eastern Railway Ltd in the United Kingdom. It is part of the National Express Group and was branded as ‘one’ from 1 April 2004 to 26 February 2008. It provides local, suburban and express services from Liverpool Street station in the City of London to destinations in the railway franchise known as the Greater Anglia network, stretching from north and east Greater London to Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk in East Anglia. The current franchise is due to end on 31 March 2011, when National Express is due to be replaced with a new operator.
However, following the 2010 General Election, the new Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers, announced that the replacement process for the two remaining National Express franchises has been "put on hold" by the Department for Transport. This could result in the National Express franchise continuing to operate after 31 March 2011, the date the DfT initially stated that National Express would lose the franchise on.
History
The franchise began on 1 April 2004 and is due to run until 31 March 2011. It combined the services previously operated by Anglia Railways, First Great Eastern and the West Anglia (WA) division of WAGN. The large franchise was created in order to improve efficiency and reliability as part of a move to reduce the number of train operating companies providing services from a single London terminal. As a result of the new franchise, the number of operators on the Great Eastern Main Line was reduced, with the company operating most services on the line.
On 26 November 2009, the Department for Transport announced that National Express East Anglia were to lose their franchise in March 2011 rather than be granted an extension to operate it until 2014 which had previously been an option. The decision follows the failure of sister company National Express East Coast, even though National Express East Anglia had met all of their targets required for the franchise to be extended.
On 18th June 2010, following the 2010 General Election, the Department for Transport announced that the replacement process for the two remaining National Express franchises would be "put on hold". This could result in the National Express franchise continuing to operate after 31 March 2011, the date the DfT initially stated that National Express would lose the franchise on.
Brand Identity
The area names from the former franchises were initially retained by the new franchise. However, all services other than Stansted Express were later branded simply ‘one’, reflecting the union of the three smaller franchises into one single franchise. This led to passenger confusion as they were unable to establish for example whether the announcer was saying the 07:20 "one" service would be delayed, or the 07:21 service.On 12 November 2007 it was announced that, as part of a company-wide re-branding exercise, National Express would change the name of the company to National Express East Anglia on 27 February 2008. On 11 December 2007 the first Class 90 locomotive to be re-liveried was rolled out of Crown Point depot in Norwich and was pictured in service the next day.
National Express East Anglia had poor industrial relations at the start of the franchise, with strikes by guards and drivers relating to ticket machines and rest day working respectively, but these issues were later resolved. Changes to the timetable were implemented in December 2005 in accordance with DfT requirements, which left some stations without any off-peak service, although a new route was introduced between Hertford East and Stratford. Other timetable changes resulted in reduced access to the Berney Marshes by means of Berney Arms railway station but an extra 3,000 seats on the West Anglia Route.
The former InterCity trains inherited by National Express East Anglia on the Great Eastern Main Line used locomotive-hauled Mark 2 sets of coaches. The Mark 2 sets were replaced with ex-Virgin Trains Mark 3 sets and all 116 Mark 3 coaches were refurbished. Replacing the Class 86 locomotives and Mk2s with Class 90s and Mk3s from the WCML was criticised as a result of their poorer condition resulting from a lack of maintenance and cleaning before they were withdrawn from service with Virgin.
National Express East Anglia also received criticism for its references to "newer" trains, since the Mk3s are in fact only a few years newer than the Mk2s, in some cases being introduced just one year later. These changes did result in improvements though: the class 90s were probably the main factor in the 17% improvement in the 'miles per 5-minute delay' figure in the year up to October 2006, but this still left the operator behind all the other ex-InterCity services, in terms of performance, as reported in the January 2007 edition of Modern Railways.