London – Norwich ‘Intercity’ services - an update for customers

Since November, the carriages used on our Intercity services have begun their periodic heavy maintenance overhaul. This is a standard programme across all UK rail fleets and compliments regular inspections ensuring the safety and reliability of all our trains.

This programme will continue through until 2016 with up to 6 carriages out of service at any time. Whilst this essential work is taking place, we will have fewer spare carriages available than usual and as such, there may be some instances where a small number of services may run with one carriage less than usual, or we might need to use an alternative type of train to run individual services.

We will do all we can to avoid any short formations or service alterations. However, we recently suffered a period when a combination of problems due to wheel flats (from slippery rails during the “leaf fall” season) and a number of motor alternator failures did result in some extra carriages being out of service. A special plan was put in place to address the problem and we would normally expect the scheduled train lengths to be delivered from now on. We are also looking at other steps to reinforce carriage availability.

Details of any alterations to the lengths of our trains are made available here; http://www.journeycheck.com/greateranglia in real time, via our free email alerting service; https://www.journeycheck.com/greateranglia/registration and via our Twitter feed; @greateranglia

Finally, please note that the cyclical overhaul also includes an exterior repaint, so you will see carriages returning in the smart new Abellio Greater Anglia livery. We are currently working to try and develop a programme of interior improvements as well and we will update you on any progress. In the meantime, we remain committed to providing you with the best possible service every day.