Mediocre Eastern Railway (First Great Eastern Railway)

Member Name: Paul Bed

Product:	First Great Eastern Railway
Date:	16/05/03 (1777 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fairly reliable, Frequent

Disadvantages: Dirty, No seats

I always thought that when you buy a train ticket that you were purchasing a seat on a train. First Great Eastern obviously think differently.

First Great Eastern run train services between London, Southend, Ipswich, Harwich and Clacton plus a couple of smaller branch lines. First Great Eastern itself was formed with privatisation in the late 1990’s as part is the First Bus group of companies.

This review mainly concentrates on services between Chelmsford and Liverpool Street as this is the route that I have daily experience of. However having used other services on an infrequent basis and discussed their services with friends who use First Great Eastern services from other destinations I think this review does give a fairly accurate pictures of their services as a whole.

In general terms the facilities at Chelmsford Station are very good and on the whole clean although the toilets are well overdue for refurbishment. The station is well staffed and keeps passengers well informed of delays/ changes to services etc.

My main gripe with services from Chelmsford is that if you travel during peak times ie 06.30 and 08.30 it is almost impossible to get seats on trains. The problem doesn’t appear to be because of the frequency of the trains, they run about every ten minutes, but because they don’t have enough carriages. It would also be helpful if they ran more trains that actually began from Chelmsford rather than arriving at Chelmsford from another destination already full.

Travelling on Great Eastern outside of peak times services is better with seats being available on the majority of trains. Their reliability also seems to improve.

On the whole their services are fairly reliable and the journey from Chelmsford to London takes about 35 minutes however when things do go wrong it is not unknown for this to treble (no joke if your standing on a squashed commuter train!)

The trains themselves
are largely fairly new rolling stock probably no more than fifteen years old. There are still a few of the old “slam door” trains left but these are due to be replaced later this year. What lets the trains down is that they never seem to get cleaned so even if you are fortunate enough to get a seat you have to think twice and consider whether you can afford the dry cleaning bill that may arise as a result. The toilets are also far from clean first thing in the morning that suggests they are not cleaned on a daily basis.

Fares on trains between Chelmsford and London are as follows:

Liverpool Street Weekly £60.00
Liverpool Street Monthly £230.40
Liverpool Street Annual £2,400.00
All Zones Travelcard Weekly £72.00
All Zones Travelcard Monthly £276.50
All Zones Travelcard Annual £2,880.00
Standard Day Return £16.90
Cheap Day Return £9.30
Peak Day Travelcard £20.40
Off-Peak Day Travelcard £12.40



Although it has to be acknowledged that a lot of improvements have been made to the services and infrastructure since privatisation the one problem they have not been able to crack is the chronic overcrowding of trains during peak times. If they could just crack this problem I could truly say that they are running a service to be proud of and that warranted the cost of the fares we have to pay. Sadly until that day comes (I’m not sure it ever will!!) I don’t think First Great Eastern can be described as anything except mediocre.

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