New Franchise

At long last we, the long suffering rail users of East Anglia have got a proper long term deal for our rail services.  Abellio (Dutch Railways) has won a nine year franchise in which they promise to replace the entire train fleet, Suburban, Main Line, Stansted Express, and Regional.

There will be essentially five types of unit supplied by two manufacturers, Bombardier and Stadler.  All trains will have free wi-fi.

The Bombardier units will be built in Derby and will have a lot of similarities to the Crossrail trains already being built there.  These will be used on all suburban services where class 317, 321 and 360 trains are used now.  There will be two different types, 5 car and 10 car, with the former used on branch lines and the latter on the main line.  These will be delivered in 2020.

There will be three different types of Stadler units, 10 car, 5 car and 4 car.  The 10 car units will be electric and replace InterCity sets and Stansted Express class 379 units.   The 5 car and 4 car units will be bi-mode (able to operate both on diesel and electric power) and will be used on Regional Services to replace existing class 153, 156, and 170 diesel railcars.  These will be delivered in 2019.

Of course regular rail users will know that many of the problems on the line relate to infrastructure faults, so we will be putting pressure on Network Rail to eliminate the string of signal, point and other failures that wreck our timetables on a regular basis.  New trains will only solve half our existing problems.

We also need to know that the existing train fleet will not be allowed to deteriorate further while we wait for the new trains.  Again we will be putting pressure on Abellio to ensure that we do not suffer a poorer service before new trains arrive. 

Abellio Wins the New Franchise To 2025

Abellio has won the contract to run trains in our region from October 2016 to 2025.

Details can be found here

Hadleigh Community Transport Group

Hadleigh Community Transport Group are seeking to promote the use of our 796 bus service which runs from Hadleigh at 0548 via Raydon, Holton, East Bergholt and Cattawade to Manningtree station each week day and returns from the Station at 1835 each week day evening arriving back in Hadleigh at 1900

It is a service mainly used by commuters but is available to anyone - you can catch the bus at any stops along the route - the fare is very reasonable and saves you the expense of car parking charges at the station and the time to park the car - we drop you off right outside the door

For further information please go to www.hadleigh.org