Refurbished Inter City Carriages

The first of the refurbished Inter City carriages has now entered service.  The pics below look quite encouraging - let us know what you think.

Lifts For Manningtree

Things are suddenly gaining pace in getting lifts installed at Manningtree station that could well see them installed before the end of this franchise (Oct 2016).  Watch this space for more information....

Footfall At Manningtree Station

Firstly, apologies for the lack of content recently but things have been a tad hectic.  But do remember that our Twitter account - @ManningtreeRUA - is another source of information.

Interesting statistics released recently confirm the extraordinary rise in passenger numbers at Manningtree Station.  Never quite sure how they measure such things but apparently 1,154,294 journeys were made from Manningtree in 2014.  This is an increase of 5.6% over the previous year and a staggering 38.4% increase from 2009.

You may be aware that there are plans to build a significant number of new houses in the area in the coming years.  If you know of anybody who might be thinking of moving to the area based on the claims of the developers that London is only an hour's commute away, you might like to point out a few facts to ensure they know what they're committing to.  For example, if you're travelling after 6:30am you're going to struggle to get a seat, especially on Inter-City Services.  For the occasional traveller, car parking is all but non existent after 9am. And so on...

East Anglia Rail Franchise Consultation

As you may be aware the current rail franchise run by Abellio Greater Anglia ends of 16th October 2016.  The Department for Transport has launched a consultation process to ensure that the views of interested parties are taken into account when deciding the specification of the new franchise.  This is an opportunity therefore to make our case for a better service.

Details of the consultation can be found here and we strongly urge you to respond.

Inter City Carriages To Be Refurbished

Greater Anglia has today issued the following Press Release which is self explanatory 

"A key milestone in the refurbishment programme for Abellio Greater Anglia's intercity MkIII carriages has been reached with the signing of a contract with Vossloh Kiepe UK to carry out the major upgrade. The significant refresh will see all of the train operator's Mark III fleet enhanced, with the following improvements throughout for both First Class and Standard carriages: 

• Plug points for charging laptops, smartphones and other electronic devices;
• New LED lighting;
• New carpets;
• New tables;
• New seat covers;
• Upgraded environmentally-friendly controlled emission toilets, including new floors and new taps;
• Re-painting of the carriage interior saloon and vestibule panels, walls and ceilings.

Exterior painting of all carriages is also currently being undertaken as part of a separate programme already underway.

The work will be undertaken at a specially prepared facility at Abellio Greater Anglia's Crown Point Depot in Norwich and the first refurbished carriages are due to enter service in the first quarter of next year, with the full programme completed by the end of the train operator's current short franchise in October 2016. Work to prepare the site in Norwich is already underway and key materials needed as part of the project are already being ordered...."

Apology From Network Rail & Greater Anglia

Network Rail and Greater Anglia have issues an apology following the appalling service in recent weeks, which continues even this evening:

"We are genuinely sorry for the problems that have affected train services in recent weeks. Performance has been well below the standards you rightly expect and we intend to deliver. As you may be aware there have been a variety of causes, ranging from infrastructure failures (e.g. with track, signalling and overhead line equipment) and engineering work problems to train faults, fatalities, flooding and road vehicles striking bridges.

We are acutely aware of the frustration and inconvenience felt by our passengers when things go wrong, so we are taking urgent action to improve performance as follows:

• Putting in place quicker response arrangements for fixing infrastructure faults

• Investing in an enhanced maintenance regime for points, signalling and level crossing equipment

• Accelerating the track-side vegetation removal programme to try and prevent trees and branches falling on overhead lines and tracks - including tackling trees close to the railway, but on third party land

• Upgrading other track and signalling equipment in the Ipswich area over the next 4 weeks to improve infrastructure reliability

• Improving the planning, project oversight, resource management and contingency arrangements for engineering work projects

• Investing in a programme to tackle the main causes of train faults (doors, couplers and pantographs)

• Accelerating the fitment of remote train monitoring equipment to more of the train fleet, which helps identify potential faults before they occur

• Adding management resource in our Control centre to provide more focus on the rural routes and branch lines to ensure performance is more consistent across the network

• Trialling the use of a small number of stand-by buses, at key locations such as Bishops Stortford, Witham, Ipswich and Norwich, to reduce the response times in providing alternative transport, where appropriate, in the event of service disruption.

In addition, we are making progress on the five initiatives we outlined in June:

1. An enhanced maintenance regime for overhead line equipment is in place, including route monitoring using a train fitted with a special rooftop camera to identify faults and potential problems
2. An enhanced maintenance regime for the track and signalling on the approaches to London Liverpool Street station (including a re-organisation of the maintenance team) has been introduced. Some track and signalling staff will now be based at Liverpool Street itself, to reduce incident response times should things go wrong
3. Improved customer information procedures to provide better information during disruption are being implemented
4. Additional customer information staff are now in place during the morning and evening peak periods
5. A software upgrade programme is underway for the London Liverpool Street departure board to improve the accuracy of information about train departures during service disruption.
Please accept our apologies for the recent problems. We are under no illusion as to the impact these problems have had on passengers and we are anxious to put things right. We believe that this targeted programme of initiatives will help restore the more consistent service we all want to see. Everyone in our teams is working as hard as possible to deliver real improvements over the coming weeks.


Jamie Burles Richard Schofield
Managing Director Managing DirectorAbellio Greater Anglia Network Rail Anglia"

Sadly, much of the above sounds familiar.

Lift Plan Approved For Manningtree Station

It is being reported that Tendring District Council has approved the application to provided lifts at Manningtree Station.  Funding comes as part of £100 million made available by the government to improve facilities for disabled passengers.   Detailed designs and costs are now to be drawn up by Network Rail with completion of the project by 2019(!)