TWO DECADES OF PROGRESS

With two trains an hour between Norwich and Ely and two, sometimes three trains an hour between Ely and Peterborough it is easy to take today's level of service for granted. Yet this pattern has only been in place since 2002 and back in the 1980s the service on the route was very different.

To gain a sense of perspective we have taken a snapshot of the service in 1986, 1996 and 2007. We have looked at the service towards Ely and Peterborough; only minor differences would have applied in the opposite direction. We have also compared the number of stops at intermediate stations and overall journey times.

Historically the emphasis was on north-south travel. Only in 1988 did the east-west cross country services begin to change that pattern as reflected in the priorities in the Ely track remodelling four years later.

By comparison with today's clock face departures, trains often ran at irregular intervals. At various times there were some very local workings such as an additional journey from Norwich to Thetford and another from Norwich to Attleborough. Norwich-Birmingham trains in the 1970s and 1980s sometimes bypassed Ely.

If you have any further comparative data we would be pleased to hear from you.

Number of journeys (Monday to Friday)

Journey	1986	1996	2007
Norwich to Ely	9	14	30
Norwich to Cambridge	4	1	17
Norwich to Peterborough	5	13	13
Norwich to Liverpool	0	11	10
Cambridge to Birmingham	4	15	17
March to Peterborough	19	24	29

Average journey times (Monday to Friday)

Journey	1986	1996	2007
Norwich to Ely	1hr 27mins	57mins	55mins
Norwich to Cambridge	1hr 44mins	1hr 18mins	1hr 15mins
Norwich to Peterborough	1hr 45mins	1hr 34mins	1hr 29mins
Norwich to Liverpool	n/a	5hrs 33mins	5hrs 32mins
Cambridge to Birmingham	3hrs 26mins	2hrs 49mins	2hrs 43mins

Number of station stops from Norwich (Monday to Friday)

Journey	1986	1996	2007
Wymondham	10	9	19
Attleborough	10	9	19
Thetford	15	14	30
Brandon	9	8	17