A railway for you – transforming train services for our region
It's an exciting time for our region's railways. We've completed a major transformation across our network, with a £1.4 billion investment in improvements to our services. That means new trains, more frequent services, more seating capacity, and better punctuality and reliability. It has also led to faster journey times on some routes.
You've told us what you want from your railway, and we've responded. The roll out of our new trains means our services have been completely transformed, revitalised, and regenerated. Meanwhile, we’ve been making other improvements too and we’re fully focused on continuing to raise service standards. Here are a few more details about the upgrades we’ve been delivering:
New trains and more seats
We’ve invested in an entire fleet of new trains, with their introduction now complete. The full fleet of 191 trains (that’s 1043 carriages) is with us, with the last new train having entered service in October 2025. All services across the Greater Anglia network are switched over to new train operation. The new trains are all longer than the trains they replaced, with more seats, and they are more reliable too. Most of the fleet is made up of electric trains, but for the regional routes, where there’s mostly no overhead power, our new, more energy efficient, diesel/electric bi-mode trains provide the flexibility to operate on all areas of the network and switch from one power source to the other as necessary, using electric power where available and changing easily to diesel where appropriate. The new fleet is delivering the intended benefits of greater comfort and increased seating capacity, as well as offering a brighter, more accessible travelling environment, with air conditioning, fast, free Wi-Fi and plug/USB points.
Faster and better services
We've reduced journey times by an average of 6-7 minutes for most of our Norwich to London intercity services, following further timetable improvements in June 2024 - which also included the provision of one even faster service each way between Norwich and London, with a scheduled journey time of just under 1 hour 40 minutes.
More recently, we’ve adjusted the West Anglia timetable to help further support improved performance and link in well with wider changes in the East Coast Main Line in December 2025 and, from May 2026, a number of targeted improvements and additional services were introduced on some of our regional routes.
Other timetable improvements, such as the direct Norwich to Stansted services and some additional Sunday services on regional routes, were delivered soon after the first new trains entered service in 2019. We’ll continue to look for opportunities for further service improvements in the future - where there is the potential demand and where the necessary rail infrastructure is in place to facilitate them.
Both the new intercity, Stansted Express, and regional bi-mode trains and the new suburban trains are longer with more seats, and offer more flexibility in responding to increases in demand, seasonal travel changes or special events. The low floors and retractable steps of the intercity, Stansted Express, and regional bi-mode trains also make them much more convenient for those with push chairs, heavy luggage, bicycles or those using wheelchairs or buggies. Meanwhile, the Stansted Express trains have now been fitted with tables in the bays of four seats, making them more consistent with the intercity and regional bi-mode trains, in response to customer feedback.
Better performance
The introduction of new trains, along with a number of joint performance initiatives with Network Rail, have already led to better performance across our network. Annual punctuality is at historically high levels – almost 92% on the demanding “Time to 3” measure, which measures arrival times at every station served by each service and around 93% on the long-standing Public Performance Measure (measuring arrival time at destination). In fact, Greater Anglia has consistently been the best performing train operator in the UK for over three years, since April 2023.
We are fully focused on maintaining, and wherever possible improving further, our performance standards and delivering an even more consistent service.
And that's not all...
We’ve delivered other enhancements, such as a new station at Beaulieu Park, north east of Chelmsford, and the roll out of contactless ticketing to 20 additional stations. There are further improvements to look forward to, including a new station at Cambridge South (open from the end of June 2026), further station enhancement initiatives, plus more car and cycle parking upgrades in the months and years ahead.
As part of our commitment to updating you on progress, we prepare a customer report. The most recent one is provided below.