Following significant recent disruption caused by severe weather conditions, fatalities and infrastructure issues, Greater Anglia has announced £1m worth of actions to improve things ongoing:
- A contract with Direct Rail Services to provide locomotives and carriages to support service provision on its local routes and increase intercity service carriage availability up to the current franchise end date in July.
- Recruiting additional maintenance staff at its Norwich Crown Point depot.
- Review of contingency plans to improve recovery times in the event of disruption and minimise the impact of any short carriage formations which do occur.
- Further modifications to West Anglia route Class 317 trains to improve door reliability.
- Work with Network Rail to secure a reduction in speed restrictions and engineering work over-runs, and to ensure a more robust operation of the freight services using the Ipswich to Felixstowe line to lessen their performance impact on the passenger services operating on this route.
- Additional fleet advisor working with the operations team to provide 24 hours cover to minimise the impact of any in-service faults.
- Development of further targeted investment schemes to tackle the key causes of delays and disruption.
- Work with Network Rail to improve the reliability of the cab-to-signaller communication system on the Class 315 and Class 317 trains used on services between Shenfield and London and on the West Anglia route.
- Extension of remote train monitoring systems which help track train systems and identify faults before they cause delays or more serious problems.
- Review of traincrew deployment and contingency plans to enable the quickest possible recovery from disruptive events.
