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The Eastern Region was a region of
British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...
from 1948, whose operating area could be identified from the dark blue signs and colour schemes that adorned its station and other railway buildings. Together with the North Eastern Region (which it absorbed in 1967), it covered most lines of the former
London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...
, except in Scotland. By 1988 the Eastern Region had been divided again into the Eastern Region and the new Anglia Region, with the boundary points being between and , and between and . The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s and was wound up at the end of 1992.


History

The region was formed in at nationalisation in 1948, mostly out of the former
Great Northern Great Northern may refer to: Transport * One of a number of railways; see Great Northern Railway (disambiguation). * Great Northern Railway (U.S.), a defunct American transcontinental railroad and major predecessor of the BNSF Railway. * Great ...
, Great Eastern and Great Central lines that were merged into the LNER in 1923. Of all the "Big Four" pre-nationalisation railway companies, the LNER was most in need of significant investment. In the immediate post-war period there was a need to rebuild the destroyed stations in London and along the busy East Coast Main Line and former Great Central Railway. Additionally, the LNER had begun a suburban electrification programme which the British Transport Commission was pledged to continue. It was partially for this reason that the former LNER in England was divided into Eastern and North Eastern regions to focus investment, unlike the other English and Welsh regions that wholly took over their respective former companies' lines. In 1967 this policy was reversed and North Eastern was merged with the Eastern region. Over the years the region was recast to be geographical rather than being based upon pre-nationalisation ownership. In 1949 the Eastern Region gained the London, Tilbury and Southend lines from the London Midland Region. In a major national boundary change in 1958 the former Great Central network except those lines in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire transferred to the London Midland Region; in return the Eastern gained the former
LMS LMS may refer to: Science and technology * Labeled magnitude scale, a scaling technique * Learning management system, education software * Least mean squares filter, producing least mean square error * Leiomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer * Lenz ...
lines in Lincolnshire and the present-day South Yorkshire. In the 1960s the Eastern became one of the regions most affected by the
Beeching Axe The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Development of the ...
, losing route miles in every county served and seeing the closure of previously important (but "duplicate") lines such as Harrogate to Northallerton via Ripon.


Network

The main routes were: *
Liverpool Street station Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, in the ward of Bishopsgate Without. It is the t ...
and the former GER eastern main line to Shenfield, Colchester and Harwich in Essex, Norwich in Norfolk and Ipswich and Felixstowe in
Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...
*Liverpool Street station and the former GER western main line to Cambridge and
King's Lynn King's Lynn, known until 1537 as Bishop's Lynn and colloquially as Lynn, is a port and market town in the borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk in the county of Norfolk, England. It is located north of London, north-east of Peterborough, no ...
(Norfolk) *
London King's Cross railway station King's Cross railway station, also known as London King's Cross, is a passenger railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden, on the edge of Central London. It is in the London station group, one of the List of busiest railway stations in ...
to Stevenage in
Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...
and Peterborough in Cambridgeshire * Fenchurch Street railway station to Basildon (from 1974), Southend and Shoeburyness. * London Marylebone to
Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...
, Nottingham and Sheffield on the
Great Central Main Line The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR), is a former railway line in the United Kingdom. The line was opened in 1899 and built by the Great Central Railw ...
(transferred to the London Midland Midland Region in 1950) The lines were managed as the Great Northern (Kings Cross services) and the Great Eastern (Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street services), with the regional headquarters at 55 Liverpool Street. After the merger with the North Eastern Region, that region's headquarters in York became the headquarters of the new Eastern Region. Commuter services via the
North London line The North London line (NLL) is a railway line which passes through the inner suburbs of west, north-west, north, and east London, England between Richmond in the south-west and Stratford in the east, avoiding central London. Its route is a rou ...
were also run into Broad Street station, but these were slowly run down and diverted to other destinations, with the station eventually being closed in 1986.


Ferries

*
Gravesend–Tilbury Ferry The Gravesend–Tilbury Ferry is a passenger ferry across the River Thames east of London. It is the last public crossing point before the Thames reaches the sea. History ''See also notes on Tilbury'' There were many ferries crossing the T ...


Electrification

The Region continued the LNER's programme of electrification, using the then-standard 1500 V overhead DC
system A system is a group of Interaction, interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment (systems), environment, is described by its boundaries, ...
, in the London suburbs, allowing for the removal of steam services from Essex by the mid-1950s, and on the busy Woodhead route between Manchester and Sheffield. The original plan had called for the eventual electrification of most of the LNER, and the Eastern Region sought to continue this policy as part of the
1955 Modernisation Plan Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...
. However, the British Transport Commission felt that many Eastern Region routes would not benefit from this; indeed, many of the rural lines proposed for electrification were in fact closed entirely by
Dr Beeching Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 – 23 March 1985), commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who for a short but very notable time was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the ...
. Instead, the Eastern Region had to content itself with being an early adopter of diesel-electric power, replacing steam at the earliest opportunity. The premier East Coast Main Line was not electrified throughout until the late 1980s, by which time the Eastern Region had been abolished with the coming of sectorisation.


References

*


Further reading

* Ball, M.G. ''British Railways Atlas'' Ian Allan Publishing 2004 * * Dudley, G. ''Why Does Policy Change? - Lessons from British Transport Policy 1945-99'' Routledge 2001 {{British Rail , state=collapsed British Rail regions