On 29.07.2024, Greater Anglia (GA) marked the 5th anniversary of its first Class 755 DEMU entering service. It celebrated together with Rock Rail and Stadler:
To celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of this significant upgrade for train services in the region, Greater Anglia invited stakeholders and media representatives to an event that started at Norwich station and included a special trip to Lowestoft and back on the specific train that operated the first service (a 07.47 train from Lowestoft to Norwich) back in 2019: 4-car Class 755 DEMU number 755410).
- 2018, the FLIRT platform was long-established, but the class 745/755 was a new development. For the first time, Stadler Rail developed a FLIRT for the UK market, which was compliant with the smaller UK loading gauge. The first 755 was released for testing in May 2018, and 755 405 was presented at Innotrans 2018.
Greater Anglia has four types of FLIRT trains in its fleet:
- Class 745/0 = 10x 12-car EMU for the London-Norwich Intercity services.
- Class 745/1 = 10x 12-car EMU for the Stansted (Airport) Express.
- Class 755/3 = 14x 3-car DEMU;
- Class 755/4 = 24x 4-car DEMU;
- Together, they have now travelled 33 million miles.
The operator stresses that its customers benefit from greater comfort, increased seating capacity, better accessibility, and other features like plug/USB points and fast, free wi-fi. The FLIRTs also helped GA deliver good punctuality and reliability percentages, making GA the best-performing train operator in the UK:
- annual performance over 94.3% on both…
- …the Public Performance Measure (arrival at destination within 5 minutes)…
- …and the Time to 3 (arrival at every station served within 3 minutes of time);
- 86% on the On Time measure – the best results of any UK operator in each case.
- On the lines from Norwich to Sheringham, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft and Marks Tey to Sudbury – have annual punctuality of over 96.5%.
- Journey times on some routes reduced – especially intercity services which are now mostly 6 or 7 minutes quicker.
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