News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 396 - 31/03/2026
Greater Anglia (GA) won four national awards for train performance at the Golden Whistles Awards 2026, which is an annual event organised by Modern Railways magazine and the Chartered Institution of Rail Operators. GA won the awards for Best London and South East operator (for the punctuality of its commuter and regional services), Best Long Distance operator (for the punctuality of its Norwich - Ipswich - Colchester - London intercity services) and Best Operational Performance (for minimising delays) for the fourth successive year. It also won the award for Minimising Cancellations - Long Distance Operator (for its Norwich - Ipswich - Colchester - London intercity services). GA had previously won three awards at the event in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025. GA is the first operator has won four awards at the annual event. See news story.
Following a delay to the launch because of technical problems interfacing with the Transport for London (TfL) system, Greater Anglia (GA) has now introduced TfL-managed contactless ticketing at 20 additonal stations, including Stansted Airport, which will avoid a lot of problems with passengers who touched at the start of their journey arriving there and finding that it was not in the contactless area. To reduce the number of passengers being caught without the correct ticket, large warning signs at Liverpool Street station reminded people to buy a ticket before boarding, but these have now been replaced with new adverts encouraging passengers to simply tap in and travel. Oyster cards don't work for trips to Stansted Airport as the technology is designed for a city rather than a region and has a limited number of zones. Unlike Oyster, contactless currently does not support railcard discounts so a paper ticket may be cheaper. See article.
According to an article on Cambridgeshire Live on 13th March 2026, the East West Rail Company has introduced a Lead Environmental Regulator to streamline planning and make key decisions "efficient" and "effective" for the project due to be completed by the late 2030s — note: the link to Cambridge had been stated as deliverted by the mid-2030s (e.g. 2025) previously. The change is intended to cut bureaucracy rather than environmental standards, the company says. This was the only 'news' in the article, the rest of which focused on the unlock £6.7 billion in economic growth and 100,000 new homes that the railway would help deliver.
BBC News reported on 11th March 2026 that the footbridge at Woodbridge railway station, which was shut back in November 2025, was still closed (and would remain so for several more weeks) despite its planned reopening in late December. The plan was to strengthen its steelwork, improve the paintwork, and install new handrails with integrated lighting, but additional defects had been identified dureing the work. Anti-climb lighting will also be installed along the bridge deck, and existing timber decking and stair treads will be replaced. Passengers have been able to get from one platform to the other using the level crossing.
Plans to add a railway station on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) to serve the housing development at Alconbury Weald (south of Peterborough) in Cambridgeshire have finally been unveiled. The development, which currently has 6,500 homes although more are planned, was built on the site of RAF Alconbury, and the first residents arrived in 2020. The owner of the site, Urban&Civic, wants to expand the town and build a railway station — something that has the support of the mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Whilst the developer would provide the land, which is on the far eastern edge of the developent, Network Rail and other transport partners would be in charge of the delivery of the railway station and its associated infrastructure. Alconbury is on the three-track stretch of the ECML, and it would need the fourth track reinstating otherwise stopping trains could hold up intercity trains. A consultation on stage 4 of the development, which includes the station, runs until Monday, 23rd March 2026. See article.
On 12th March 2026 A Cambridgeshire Live article featured the development plans around Cambridge North station focusing on the new three-storey car park that will replace the flat 428-space car park in order to free land for laboratories. The car park will be next to the Novotel hotel. The plans have been around for at least four years, but the article appears to have been written following a recent planning application. The aerticle refers to 618 parking spaces, with the ground floor having 150 spaces, EV charging spaces, and accessible spaces. Levels one, two, and three with also have 150 spaces. This totals 600, not 6q8 so perhaps the accessible spaces acocnt for the additinoal 18. The applicants say that the car park will provide a "strategically located parking infrastructure", mentipning that it is within walking distance of a number of business parks, including Cambridge Business Park, the Sunningdale Caravan Park, St John's innovation park, and Nuffield Road industrial estate. The article says the developers also hope it will be more "cost effective" and "sustainable" but not against what (presumably the existing car park).
An article on Cambridgeshire Live on 12th March 2026 looked at plans by Anglian Water for a major Fens Reservoir between Chatteris and Doddington to improve water resources to 250,000 homes in 'water stressed' Cambridgeshire, with a planning application submitted to Fenland District Council for part of the reservoir works. Boreholes, which will be in place for four years, will help "understand the groundwater conditions in proximity to the location of the future Fens Reservoir." If the Fens Reservoir goes ahead, it could supply 87 million litres of water a day and is hoped to be completed by 2036. The article failed to mention that the possible sites for the reservoir would be located near to the Ely-Peterbourgh railway, which would be a critical logistics solution to reduce construction traffic on local roads. To manage the estimated 1,000-1,400 vehicle movements per day at peak construction, the project is exploring two main railhead options for transporting approximately 2 million tonnes of aggregates and rock: Whitemoor Yard (March) and Manea Sidings (Stonea).
An article in the Fenland Times reported that on Saturday 7th March 2026, volunteers from the Bramley Line Heritage Railway Trust (BLHRT) marked 60 years since the closure of Coldham station on the March to Wisbech railway line. Passenger services on the line ended in 1968, with freight continuing until 2000. Today, little remains of Coldham station (originally known as Peartree Station) apart from the former toilet block, now hidden by dense undergrowth. In December 2025, the BLHRT submitted a proposal to Anglian Water, during the third phase of consultation on the proposed Fen Reservoir (see above), suggesting that the railway line between Whitemoor and Chain Bridge could be used to transport construction materials, transferring them to the inland waterways network for delivery to the site.
Network Rail has lodged proposals with Broadland District Council to relocate the Grade II-listed Victorian-era signal box at Brundall relocated to the County School Station (just beyond North Elmham) on the Mid-Norfolk Railway (MNR). The two-storey timber-clad signal box was built in 1883 for the Great Eastern Railway and was used until 2020, when it was decommissioned. Network Rail (NR) is willing to gift it to the MNR, as it (NR) is increasingly concerned about the deteriorating state of the signal box, the genuine threat of arson and ongoing vandalism, so moving it to the heritage railway in Mid-Norfolk is the best option of protecting it, saying: "relocating the signal box to an off-site heritage railway, [means] the building can be restored and maintained appropriately in the future." According to an article in the Eastern Daily Press — see here — papers lodged with the district council state that the box would have to be dismantled into two halves so it could be taken by road to its new home. Mid-Norfolk Railway has plans to extend its current heritage line to the County School station, where the box would be put to use, but the article fails to mention that MNR volunteers had erected the former Halesworth signal box there in 2007; however, it has arrived in poor condition and was eventually moved to the Mangapps Railway Museum for preservation in 2017.
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Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 396 - 31/03/2026
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