Greater Anglia's new fleet of trains has clocked up six million miles of service during their first year in action even if much of the time they have been running nearly empty.
The company has now taken delivery of all 58 of its new Swiss-built Intercity and regional trains and has also introduced the first six of its new Aventra suburban trains on lines in south Essex. The first of these is expected to enter passenger service on routes to Ipswich and Colchester early in 2021.
This year entire routes in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire are now served exclusively by new trains, including Greater Anglia’s intercity service between Norwich, Ipswich and London Liverpool Street.
In the past 12 months 35 new trains have been put into passenger service, with four making their maiden voyages in the last weeks of the year. This includes ten intercity trains, ten Stansted Express trains, nine bi-mode trains which switch between electricity and diesel to run on our regional routes and six electric commuter trains.
The new trains so far introduced have a total of 26,338 seats on them.
The company saw the back of 38 trains during the year - including the former Intercity fleet of carriages and electric locomotives. All the locomotives have new uses with Freightliner or with rail charter companies while the carriages are either being used for special trains on the rail network or have been sold to heritage railways. Some are likely to end up being scrapped.
In total, Greater Anglia so far has 64 new trains in passenger service, out of a total of 191 new trains.
Those still to arrive are more Aventras which are being built by Bombardier at its Derby factory - it is a design that has been ordered by rail companies across the country.
Throughout 2021, Greater Anglia’s new commuter trains will replace all the company’s old trains on Great Eastern Main Line routes between Liverpool Street and Stowmarket, Ipswich, Colchester, Clacton, Walton-on-the-Naze and Harwich.
New trains include energy saving and environmental features including aerodynamic design, regenerative braking which puts energy back into the supply network rather than wasting it through heat, and lower particulate pollution.
Ian McConnell, Greater Anglia franchise and programmes director said: “We’re tremendously proud that we’ve been able to crack on with rolling out new trains – despite the challenges of the pandemic.
“Customer feedback has been fantastic. These new trains are really making a difference to people’s experience of travelling by train. We’re looking forward to even more people enjoying them next year as we bring even more new trains onto our network.”
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