Great Eastern Main Line
Last updated 22 May 2026
Liverpool Street to Felixstowe via Ipswich — the most freight-intensive route into a UK container port.
| NR route | Anglia |
| Route chain | Liverpool Street – Stratford – Colchester – Ipswich – Felixstowe |
| Monitoring points | 22 on the corridor |
| Length | 85 miles |
| Branch line capacity | Felixstowe Branch Line — 47 paths/day |
| Key constraints | Haughley Junction; Ely Area |
| Active since | Live since February 2026 |
| Trailing 12-period A2F | Fewer than 12 closed periods of clean data on record — available once the pipeline reaches 12 complete periods. |
Latest period summary
Great Eastern Main Line recorded 78% A2F punctuality in Period 2 2026-27 (26 April – 23 May 2026) on 1,274 freight services, flat on 78% in Period 1 2026-27 on a larger denominator. The intervals overlap with the prior period. PRELIMINARY at T+2; FINAL re-publication at T+35 after Network Rail's batch correction.
Reports
Operators active
- GB Railfreight
- Freightliner Intermodal
- DB Cargo UK
- Direct Rail Services
Origin ports
Methodology & sources
All figures derive from Network Rail's NROD TRUST feed, processed via the Gauge Intelligence ingest pipeline. Period definitions, A2F (Arrival to Fifteen), the Wilson 90% interval, daily anomaly rules, cross-view reconciliation, and delay attribution are documented at:
Data window — period boundaries and the data-as-of cutoff
League tables — cross-view reconciliation across the four analytical views
Anomaly detection — daily A2F SPC rules
Delay attribution — DAPR cause-code breakdown
Forecasting — prediction intervals and possession-exposure estimates
The Great Eastern Main Line carries every rail freight movement between Felixstowe — Britain’s largest container port — and the national network, via Ipswich, Colchester, and Stratford. It is the most intermodal-intensive corridor on the British freight network.
Three to four freight operators run regular services across the corridor; GB Railfreight and Freightliner Intermodal carry the largest shares.