Two decades of progress

With two trains an hour between Norwich and Ely and two, sometimes three trains an hour between Ely and Peterborough it is easy to take today’s level of service for granted. Yet this pattern has only been in place since 2002 and back in the 1980s the service on the route was very different.

To gain a sense of perspective we have taken a snapshot of the service in 1986, 1996 and 2007. We have looked at the service towards Ely and Peterborough; only minor differences would have applied in the opposite direction. We have also compared the number of stops at intermediate stations and overall journey times.

Historically the emphasis was on north-south travel. Only in 1988 did the east-west cross country services begin to change that pattern as reflected in the priorities in the Ely track remodelling four years later.

By comparison with today’s clock face departures, trains often ran at irregular intervals. At various times there were some very local workings such as an additional journey from Norwich to Thetford and another from Norwich to Attleborough. Norwich-Birmingham trains in the 1970s and 1980s sometimes bypassed Ely.

If you have any further comparative data we would be pleased to hear from you.

Number of journeys (Monday to Friday)

Journey	1986	1996	2007
Norwich to Ely	9	14	30
Norwich to Cambridge	4	1	17
Norwich to Peterborough	5	13	13
Norwich to Liverpool	0	11	10
Cambridge to Birmingham	4	15	17
March to Peterborough	19	24	29

Average journey times (Monday to Friday)

Journey	1986	1996	2007
Norwich to Ely	1hr 27 min	57 min	55 min
Norwich to Cambridge	1hr 44 min	1hr 18 min	1hr 15 min
Norwich to Peterborough	1hr 45 min	1hr 34 min	1hr 29 min
Norwich to Liverpool	n/a	5hrs 33 min	5hr 32 min
Cambridge to Birmingham	3hr 26 min	2hrs 49 min	2hr 43 min

Number of station stops from Norwich (Monday to Friday)

Station	1986	1996	2007
Wymondham	10	9	19
Attleborough	10	9	19
Thetford	15	14	30
Brandon	9	8	17