FLIRT bi-mode trains help Greater Anglia to top performing operator

Ben Jones visits East Anglia to see how the Swiss-built Stadler FLIRT bi-mode trains - and the Derby-built ‘Aventras’ - have helped Greater Anglia to become the country’s best-performing operator in the five years since their introduction.

In this article:

• Abellio Greater Anglia replaced its entire fleet with £1.6bn modern trains from Stadler and Bombardier.
• Initial rollout faced delays and technical challenges, later achieving record punctuality and passenger satisfaction.
• New trains improved accessibility, capacity, and service reliability, transforming rail travel across East Anglia.

Even by the standards of the mid-2010s franchise deals, Abellio Greater Anglia’s £1.6 billion plan to replace its entire fleet was bold and ambitious.

Hundreds of ex-BR electric multiple units (EMUs), locomotive-hauled trains, a mixed bag of diesel multiple units (DMUs) for rural lines, and even the relatively recent Siemens Class 360s and Bombardier Class 379s would be swept away by a tidal wave of new trains ordered from Bombardier and Stadler.

When it won the Anglia franchise in August 2016, Netherlands Railways subsidiary Abellio committed to having its entire new fleet in service by 2020, allowing the older trains to be retired or cascaded elsewhere.

They would be supported by new and upgraded depots, improved stations and a range of passenger-focused initiatives to improve the reliability and punctuality of services on Great Eastern and West Anglia routes radiating from Liverpool Street.

One of the main drivers of the procurement of the new Anglia fleet was to have it in place before the new PRM (Persons of Restricted Mobility) regulations came into force on January 1 2020.

Stadler and Greater Anglia spent many months in consultation with stakeholders, passenger groups and staff to devise the optimum design and layout for the trains.

Mike Kean, Franchise and Programmes Director at Greater Anglia, said in 2017: “Our priority for the new trains was to involve the public and stakeholders fully in the design process, and we are pleased that this extensive consultation process has resulted in so much useful feedback which will inform and shape the final design.”

Deliveries of production FLIRT sets were due to start in spring 2019, and all 58 trains should have been in service by the end of the year.

GA ordered 378 vehicles from Stadler, which were assembled at the company’s plants in Switzerland, Poland and Hungary to the UK loading gauge.

They were formed into 20 12-car inter-city/Stansted Express 25kV AC electric sets, and 24 four-car and 14 three-car electro-diesel regional units.

This £610 million order was Stadler’s first for main line trains in the UK, part of a £1.54bn total fleet replacement programme by GA franchise holder Abellio. Stadler also maintains the new trains at Crown Point depot in Norwich.

Fast forward to 2024 - and we know that things did not go entirely as planned.

In July 2019, the first Stadler bi-mode FLIRT (755410) made a delayed passenger debut on the 0747 Lowestoft-Norwich.

It was heralded as the start of a new era for rail travel in East Anglia - an era that would result in many lines in the region gaining their first brand-new trains (as opposed to hand-me-downs) for more than 50 years.

However, the commissioning and introduction of the four sub-fleets was fraught with difficulties. Greater Anglia staff and passengers endured a tough couple of years after the 2019 launch, as Stadler and GA’s engineering teams struggled to achieve acceptable levels of reliability.

The bewildering complexity of designing and commissioning new train designs to work across a diverse network would have been challenge enough. But a global pandemic, staff shortages, and supply line issues all contributed to making GA’s timetable unrealistic.

And that’s before we even start to consider the painful introduction of GA’s other new fleet - the Bombardier Class 720 ‘Aventra’ EMUs.

The Class 745 and ‘755’ FLIRTs suffered numerous technical gremlins after introduction - some related to the GPS-based system managing features such as Selective Door Opening (SDO), Passenger Information Systems (PIS), and switching over from diesel to electric mode at locations such as Ely and Stowmarket.

While the Stadler product was welcomed as a significant upgrade on what went before, it took the Swiss company some time to get to grips with the unique conditions it encountered in Britain.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the COVID pandemic actually brought some benefits in the rollout of the new fleet, as GA and Stadler were able to iron out many of the technical issues before passengers started to return en masse.

To go from design to introduction within a two- to three-year period is always a challenge for train builders. Unlike the car or aircraft industries, new trains aren’t subject to years of research and development, nor do they enjoy the multi-billion-pound investment programmes that form the basis of new car or airliner platforms.

Even with a ‘mature’ product such as the FLIRT, there are always differences between existing and new fleets. This was especially true in the case of Stadler entering the UK market for the first time.

GA’s bi-mode Class 755s have also experienced issues, with a higher-than-expected failure rate on their Deutz diesel engines - three-car Class 755/3s have two 645hp V8 engines per set, while four-car Class 755/4s have four engines per train.

However, having suffered through tough times, GA and its passengers have seen a gradual improvement in performance and are now starting to enjoy the benefits of a modern, reliable train fleet. The Class 755s topped the DMU reliability charts in 2021-22 and appear to have their early problems firmly behind them.

The Greater Anglia network is a diverse mix of very busy commuter and outer-suburban routes funnelling into London Liverpool Street from Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire; a critical inter-city route serving the most important towns and cities in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk; the Stansted Express airport link; a varied collection of cross-country routes such as Norwich-Stansted and Peterborough-Ipswich; and rural branch lines to Sheringham, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Felixstowe and Sudbury.

As well as established commuter flows into London, leisure travel is a significant part of the business on all its routes.

The fleet inherited by Abellio reflected this split personality, including everything from Class 153 diesel railcars to ex-West Coast Main Line Class 90 locomotives and Mk 3 coaches. The challenge was to replace it with a much more standardised portfolio of rolling stock, but one which could still serve all parts of the network effectively.

For the core commuter and outer-suburban lines, 665 ‘Aventra’ EMU vehicles were ordered from Bombardier at a cost of £900 million.

Originally, these were planned to form 89 five-car and 22 ten-car sets, although the order was modified in October 2020 (cancelling the ten-car Class 720/1s, which would instead be built as five-car trains).

Designed for maximum seating capacity, these would replace all of GA’s Class 321, ‘322’, ‘360/1’ and ‘379’ EMUs on commuter and semi-fast services.

GA ‘Aventras’ work from Liverpool Street to Cambridge, Hertford East, Southend Victoria, Southminster, Braintree, Colchester, Clacton, Walton-on-the-Naze and Ipswich. They are maintained at Ilford depot in north-east London.

A new depot at Brantham (near Manningtree) was to have been completed in time to start receiving the new fleet for commissioning in late 2018, but was abandoned owing to site access problems.

Five-car Class 720 sets are 122 metres long with full-width gangways between cars and a massive 540 seats. Ten-car sets would have had a whopping 1,146 seats per set, although the need for these peak-time ‘crowdbusters’ has diminished since the COVID pandemic disrupted traditional commuting patterns.

Individually, the Class 720s carry between 22% and 45% more people than the previous fleet using 24-metre-long cars, as opposed to the 20-metre cars of their predecessors.

The first set was completed at Bombardier’s Litchurch Lane Works (now Alstom) in Derby in September 2018.

Deliveries to GA were due to commence in January 2019, with the first five-car trains due to enter service just two months later.

However, delays in the development of the new ‘Aventra’ Train Control Management System (TCMS) and the need for extensive software changes during the build and delivery process forced GA to retain many older trains for longer than expected.

Main line testing did not commence until March 2020, just as the COVID lockdowns took effect. This exacerbated the delay, with the result that fare-paying passengers were not carried until late November of that year.

Two sets initially entered service on the Liverpool Street-Southend Victoria line, with operation extending to the Braintree and Southminster routes the following month.

As the onboard software problems were gradually resolved, operation expanded to the Cambridge line and the rest of the Great Eastern network during 2021.

Alstom finally completed assembly of the Class 720 fleet in 2023, and they now monopolise GA’s outer-suburban operations.

Now part of the Transport UK group following Abellio’s departure from the British rail industry in 2023, Greater Anglia is now consistently the country’s best-performing passenger operator, with 94.3% of trains arriving at stations within three minutes of their scheduled time and 86% on time.

August 2024’s figures were even more impressive, at over 95%. And GA has been the country’s best-performing passenger TOC for five consecutive quarters.

GA’s regional and rural routes, operated by bi-mode Class 755s, are better still, with their current annual punctuality exceeding 96.5% (and 98% on the Norwich-Great Yarmouth and Sudbury lines in August). Norwich to Sheringham and Lowestoft, London-Southend Victoria and Colchester/Clacton all also exceeded the 96% mark last month.

Indeed, recent experience suggests that the FLIRTs easily maintain schedules, thanks to their sparkling acceleration, and that they often arrive at station stops two to three minutes early.

While this helps to maintain punctuality, GA has not missed the opportunity to tighten up its inter-city schedules, which are generally six to seven minutes quicker than previously. In the five years since their debut, GA’s FLIRTs have travelled more than 33 million miles.

Three main factors are highlighted by the operator for this high level of performance: sustained joint work by the operator and Network Rail to improve performance standards; better performance provided by the new trains, which now operate all GA services; and work by Network Rail to improve rail infrastructure reliability.

The latter includes the upgrading and modernisation of overhead line equipment on the Great Eastern Main Line and its branches, reducing disruption caused by hot weather and the failure of life-expired OLE dating from the 1950s.

More directly, passengers also benefit from increased comfort, more seats, better accessibility, and other features such as plug/USB points and fast, free WiFi.

The improvement is especially stark on regional/rural routes, where the ‘755s’ replaced basic and outdated ex-BR Class 153 and Class 156 DMUs plus a handful of Class 170s from the early 2000s.

The Stadler Class 745/755 FLIRTs are one of the few British train fleets to offer level boarding and retractable steps - representing a major step forward for passenger accessibility and safety, and a benchmark for future new train procurement.

Unfortunately, the Bombardier/Alstom Class 720s do not enjoy quite the same level of accessibility, although their 936mm floor height provides level access (or something close to it) at around 80% of GA stations.

Celebrating the anniversary of the FLIRTs, GA Managing Director Jamie Burles says: “Five years on from our first bi-mode train entering passenger service, train services in East Anglia have been successfully and positively transformed, with comfortable trains, excellent performance, better services, and new journey opportunities.

“Passengers and stakeholders alike have welcomed the step-change in service quality, and customer numbers are rising as a result.”

Between April 2023 and March 2024, passenger journeys on Greater Anglia rose by 15% to 76.4 million.

Burles continues: “Looking ahead, we can reassure customers and communities across our network that our plans are not just to maintain the high standards of rail travel and performance we have now set, but to keep on improving services in line with local needs, as rail plays an ever more crucial role in the region’s sustainable development.”

Those improvements could mean more frequent services on some routes, or longer trains to provide more capacity.

GA has highlighted the potential for strengthening its Class 755s - particularly the short Class 755/3s - with additional intermediate vehicles when they were introduced.

However, the operator remains non-committal, telling RAIL: “We plan ahead and wherever possible use Class 755/4s on busier routes/local events. These trains offer a significant improvement and increase in capacity compared with our old rolling stock. However, if demand continues to grow, adding an extra carriage to the ‘755/3s’ is something that could be considered.”

Urs Bikle, Business Development Director at Stadler, adds: “The fifth anniversary of the first bi-mode entering commercial service is a significant landmark and cause for celebration.

“Designed with the 21st century passenger in mind, these trains have taken rail travel in East Anglia to a new level. They have transformed the customer experience, improved performance, increased seating capacity, delivered groundbreaking accessibility benefits and enabled the delivery of other service improvements.

“Industry surveys and performance measures show Greater Anglia excelling in a range of measures, including reliability and punctuality as well as passenger satisfaction. We are thrilled to have been part of this journey.”