Until the mid-1950s, apart from a handful of L&NER-designed classes, this was still very much a Great Eastern Railway except for the arrival of the ‘Britannia’ Pacifics from 1951. It would be completely transformed over the next decade with dieselisation and the early introduction of DMUs. Rationalisation began in 1953 and continued with the closure of the M&GN in 1959. Beeching took out most of the remaining branch lines leaving only the main lines to Cambridge, King’s Lynn and Norwich, together with the lines to Great Yarmouth, Harwich/Lowestoft and Cromer/Sheringham. We begin our journey at Cheshunt on the main line from London to Cambridge stopping off on the way for the Thaxted branch. At Cambridge we have a detailed look at the station and the variety of services which arrived there. From there we take the line north from Chesterton Junction which split at St. Ives for March and Huntingdon. Doubling back to Cambridge we continue on the Norwich main line to Ely. Then we head north to King’s Lynn, diverting briefly down the Stoke Ferry branch. Next is the branch to Hunstanton and then the West Norfolk Junction line to Wells-next-the-Sea. From Wells we go south through Dereham and Wymondham and on to Norwich. There we observe operations at Thorpe station and visit the shed. Norwich was the terminus of three other routes and we travel down each one beginning with the line to Cromer and Sheringham including the Norfolk & Suffolk Joint via Mundesley. Next are the lines to Yarmouth, to Haughley and to Thetford. From Thetford we go north again, back to King’s Lynn via Swaffham before travelling south west to March, stopping at Wisbech East to go down the tramway to Upwell. At March we look at the important Whitemoor yards and the large engine shed before a short trip to Fordham via Ely and then go from March to Peterborough. Finally, we travel the whole length of the former Midland & Great Northern from Peterborough to Melton Constable via Sutton Bridge and South Lynn, and then on to Cromer, Yarmouth and Norwich before returning to Sutton Bridge and the connections with the Great Northern at Spalding and Bourne and with the Midland Railway line from Castle Bytham to Melton Mowbray.Pre-nationalisation motive power continued into the 1950s with ex-GER ‘B12’ 4-6-0s and ‘Claud Hamilton’ 4-4-0s supported by ‘J15’ and ‘J17’ 0-6-0s on freight work. Gradually ‘B17’ and ‘B1’ 4-6-0s and ‘K3’ 2-6-0s replaced these although BR Standard designs had little impact. The motive power on the former Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway lines was transformed virtually overnight when over fifty Ivatt Class ‘4’ 2-6-0s arrived there between September 1950 and September 1952. Lightweight DMUs were introduced in a pre-Beeching attempt to reduce costs on the lightly used branch and secondary services. English Electric Type ‘4’s took over the principal express work from 1959 and by the mid-1960s Brush Type ‘2’ and English Electric Type ‘3’s became ubiquitous.
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