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Hello & welcome to the tenth episode of Failed Franchises. In this series I look at train companies that have failed at their franchise agreements or have been criticised by passengers & industry alike. Today I’m looking at Anglia Railways; Anglia’s first privatised Intercity operator and whether they should be classed as a failed franchise, or were they rather successful in their short time of operation!
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32 Comments
First viewer
86s, or as I call them in train sim. Work god damn you!
wasn't expecting to see my employer mentioned in the video ! congrats on the sponsorship 🙂
08:36 did you said '86 engine'?
first comment :p
{that didnt get it early}
I'm watching this as I drink my cuppa from an Anglia railways mug! Growing up Worstead was the nearest station to me & I'd occasionally see a 150 waiting but it was always still in the old Regional Railways livery, it felt like it was nearly the end of the franchise before I started seeing Class 150's in Anglia livery and any time we travelled on the mainline I always insisted we sit in the DBSO!
Great video, good to see Anglia Railways getting discussed.
I liked Anglia,they ran restaurant cars to Norwich.
Nice One As Always 👍
never heard of Anglia railways im from Glasgow so go figure but im intrigued
a failed franchise i would love to know more about would be abilio scotrail that went very badly
The Norwich to Basingstoke service was meant to of continued on to Southampton via new stations at Northam for St Marys Stadium and a new station near the former Southampton Terminus Station. They would of also offered a limited service via Romsey in hopes to reduce over-all traffic in the Hampshire region but this was blocked by the then TOS South West Trains. Their argument was, too much congestion in the Southampton region. It's a shame really, could of been a useful long-distant intercity service.
A great era of the great eastern that often goes unheard of
A great video, I do miss the old class 90 train sets. Thank you for uploading this video 😊
I knew Anglia Railways wasn’t a failed franchise! Sure they had their issues but at least they didn’t kill hundreds of people and get away with it like Railtrack.
Also, I believe the Mk2 coaches are heavily underrated
You may want to edit ur description it says 9th failed franchise instead of 10
I never did the Cross Link to Basingstoke but a friend of mine who i worked with at Thames Trains,another failed franchise?,did it.I think that he said that it was a Sprinter of some form.I believe that it wasn't very reliable presumably because Anglia promised something that they couldn't deliver due to not enough drivers and guards with the route knowlege a bit like the joint,when it ran!, Thames/Great Western Oxford to Bristol service!
A bit of a triumph of style over substance this one – I.E their marketing was better than the actual service.
i will say this, having a United Anglia franchise allowed for the best trains in the UK to touch most of the region. FLIRTs have improved accessibility across most of the region, and allowed many routes to be future proofed when electrification comes
Could you do First Scotrail? Or virgin trains east coast?
nice video! Just got the membership
Congrats on your first sponsor. What a journey for you.
I often used the Basingstoke – Norwich service for journeys within the Travelcard area. It was a nice idea for getting to the Heathrow RailAir coach from Norfolk; but the slow route round what is now the Overground didn't do it any favours. Watching the confused looks of passengers waiting for local services whilst enjoying coffee in 1st class was priceless though.
Great service, used their Dining car alot. Shame GA got rid of them
hi there Anglia Railways sadly missed, many fond memories of standing at Stratford stn and liverpool st station watching these sets and riding in the mk2d coaches, where i found nothing wrong with them, sometimes a mk1 catering car would be in the set in intercity colours, thank goodness hornby made the rolling stock and locos,
I remember them well. They had an amazing catering service in First Class, which was trashed by ONE (National Express)
Anglia was brilliant operator, there focus on the rural lines still pays now.
But national express really did fail. Things have pick up again now since Abellio have had it once they got the numerous teething problems with classes 745 and 755 sorted.
When I was at the University of Wales Aberystwyth the train to Aberystwyth via Birmingham New Street started its journey either at Norwich but mostly from Great Yarmouth thus the train went from coast to coast.
It was rumoured that the only reason Anglia Railways were viable was that the schedule 8 payments from Railtrack due to infrastructure delays were so high. As soon as Railtrack got their act together (sort of), the schedule 8 payments to Anglia dried up and left them a bit short. I have no idea if this was actually true? As a commuter between Norwich and London for the duration of Anglia and NXEA, the Anglia stock was dire. It was rough riding, the toilets stank, and the aircon and lighting failed constantly. Actually, if the lights failed and the heating still worked, that was a good coach to grab a nap in – a feature Abellio should note with their overbright stark lighting in the Stadler units. NXEA improved things with the mk3s. Anglia were a bit quirky though, and one could often find some fairly unusual locos at the front on the way home to Norwich on the 17:00 from Liv. St. including the odd Deltic (purple Porterbrook I think it was) Shame about the nobhead trainspotters hanging out the windows freezing the commuters to death becuase the vestible doors were constantly opening as they were running up and down the train clutching their parts. I can remember the Hastings unit on the wherry lines as well! As someone else said in the comments, "Anglia were a triumph of style over substance" where the various awards were a mystery to the actual regular users of the route. But hey, privatisation was new territory for a lot of people in the industry so it was a steep learning curve especially for how contracts should be written for franchises, and what constituted a viable business plan.
Good video 👍
Nice video! But what do you mean by 'free different franchises'? Tickets have never been free?
I'm intrigued by the footage around 9 minutes, that looks a lot like Southend Victoria so the Anglia set is a bit lost! Anglia Railways were timetable innovators like Connex but were also good at PR which Connex definitely weren't. The Colchester to Basingstoke service got ditched even quicker than the Gatwick to Rugby or Brighton to Manchester (Virgin) services. Someone in the SRA or DfT clearly didn't want services that went around London!
I seem to recall that when the Greater Anglia Franchise shortlist was announced that First Group weren't one of the 3 invited to tender, but Anglia was, and therefore First Group purchased Anglia to get another bite at the franchise. As for the 86/DBSO combination, they were widely known as SCUDS. The crazy way privatisation was introduced saw an incident where an SCUD failed, (Loco failure) and the driver called Sinaller and requested assistance and despite being very close to Stratford, (where a number of now Railfreight locos sat idling, including 47s that he still signed) he was told a loco was leaving Crown Point to assist. I know this because he cadged a cab ride back to Rayleigh with me. (I gave him grief for messing up my diagram,)