Judging by the reaction to this news, there will be few tears shed at the departure of NXEA. Why is this?
A brief history might be in order. (Rail privatisation is a complex business so concentration will be required at this point). Following on from privatisation, services out of Liverpool Street were split into three franchises. Firstly services out towards Cambridge and the west of East Anglia including the Stansted Express were awarded to West Anglia Great Northern (WAGN) - a National Express company. Services from Liverpool Street to Ipswich and Southend and all stations and branch lines in between were awarded to First Great Eastern - A Firstgroup company, famous up to that point for running bus services around the UK and actually called Firstbus. Lastly, rural services out of Norwich and Ipswich and the Intercity route from Norwich to London were awarded to Anglia Railways - owned by GBRail, a company created specifically to run this franchise.
To be fair I cannot comment on the WAGN service as I don't think I ever used it. However to the onlooker they did become infamous for having filthy looking trains. More on this later.
First Great Eastern (FGE) went on to become the second most reliable service in the country. The most reliable service being the Island Line on the Isle Of Wight. So, lets be honest FGE were the most reliable grown up railway in the country. They were also the only franchise to pay a premium to the government. So, in short they did everything that was asked of them and then some.
Anglia Railways became popular in Norfolk and Suffolk for the services they provided on the rural branch lines and for the services they introduced such as Norwich to Cambridge which went on to become very successful. Although I'm sure many would disagree I didn't regard their InterCity service as that great. The trains themselves were almost prehistoric and as such broke down with monotonous regularity. Anglia was also heavily reliant on government subsidies.
After a while the government came to the conclusion that too many franchises had been created across the country and that this created something of an administrative nightmare. For example, Railtrack, the predecessor of Network Rail would need to have contractual arrangements in place with each franchise and this would cause unnecessary red tape in the running of, say, Liverpool Street. The government decided therefore to consolidate franchises where possible and as such companies were invited to bid for the Greater Anglia franchise which would effectively be an amalgam of the WAGN, FGE and Anglia businesses.
The body responsible for the allocation of rail franchises was the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) headed up by one Richard Bowker.
Now it is here that the wheels begin to fall off. FirstGroup - those you remember responsible for running the second most successful franchise in whole of the UK in the form of First Great Eastern - were not even allowed to bid for the new franchise. The official reason was that they had incorrectly completed an application form. Extraordinary and to be honest totally unbelievable.
The shortlist of companies bidding for the franchise came down to Arriva, GBRail (Owners of Anglia) and National Express (Owners of WAGN). To ensure that FirstGroup stayed in the race they bought GBRail.
To the surprise of many including it is thought, National Express, the latter were awarded the franchise and so 'one' was born. It is still not clear where the name 'one' came from. Some say it stood for Operated by National Express and others that the word 'one' signified one franchise instead of three. Whatever the reason it was a disaster. The name was ridiculed from the start, as was the corporate look that was adopted by the company. Then came the introduction of a new timetable. This was a requirement of the franchise and whoever had won would have been required to do it. (Basically the timetable had to be made more 'robust' by adding delays into it). However 'one' made an absolute Horlicks of this new timetable which in my view set the tone for the remainder of the 'one' / NXEA franchise. I believe that they were on the backfoot from this point on.
During the 'one' franchise a certain Richard Bowker became chairman of National Express. (As chairman of the SRA he had blocked FirstGroup from bidding.) The SRA ceased to exist and the Department for Transport became responsible for overseeing the railways. Soon afterwards NX undertook a rebranding exercise which saw them adopt a single look and feel to their coach and rail operations. Out went the 'one' brand and in came National Express East Anglia. However, the stigma attached to the 'one' brand remained.
An observation made by many is that NX don't seem to take care of their trains. I mentioned earlier that WAGN trains always looked filthy and sadly NXEA trains have gone the same way. After 5 and half years there are still trains with FirstGroup colours on them. Indeed there are currently five different liveries on use.
In fairness to NXEA a lot of the issues attributed to them are not actually their fault at all. Most delays are caused by infrastructure issues which are the responsibility of Network Rail. And, as mentioned earlier punctuality is the best it has ever been. However, such is the dislike that passengers have for the brand it doesn't matter. In a TV news item last night one gentleman was blaming NXEA for a 2 hour delay at Ipswich caused by a lightening strike!
And so with the demise of NXEA surely it is time to draw a line under it all and start afresh? The new incumbent, whoever that may be, has the opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper and a sixth livery for our trains.
(Can I ask that they put in for some new trains for the London Norwich route as a top priority. East Anglia deserves better than the hand me downs we have had to endure in the past.)
