Anglia Railways

Anglia Railways was a British train operating company, owned by GB Railways, which between 5 January 1997 and 31 March 2004 operated mainline trains out of London Liverpool Street station and a number of local rail services in East Anglia. It also introduced a pioneering service outside of the territory inherited with the franchise. The service was called "London Crosslink" and ran from the Great Eastern Main Line via the North London Line to Basingstoke. This service ran from 30 May 2000 to 28 September 2002.

On 1 April 2004 its franchise was transferred to Train Operating Company London Eastern Railway Ltd, which is a subsidiary of the National Express Group. Its services were initially branded 'one' and have since been rebranded as National Express East Anglia.

The decision to transfer the franchise to National Express was controversial, since Anglia was twice awarded "Train Operator of the Year"[1] and also "European Train Operator of Year 2000" [2]. Anglia Railways was very popular with passengers, its parent company GB Railways, was purchased by First Group, operator of First Great Eastern, who had won the "Train Operator of the Year" award once as well. National Express on the other hand had a reputation for poor service (Central Trains).