Great Eastern Railway

The Great Eastern Railway (GER ) was a British railway company that existed from 1862 to 1922. Their main line, the Great Eastern Main Line, linking London with Norwich. The GER had more routes throughout East Anglia. The length of the GER- haul network was 1917 km and the Company had long been an almost complete monopoly in East Anglia, to the foundation of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway in 1893.

Founded as the GER as a merger of the Eastern Counties Railway with numerous smaller companies, including Norfolk Railway, Eastern Union Railway, Newmarket Railway, Harwich Railway, East Anglian Light Railway and East Suffolk Railway. In 1902 the Northern and Eastern Railway joined the GER.

Among the major cities that were opened by the London Liverpool Street terminus of, among Southend -on-Sea, Chelmsford, Colchester, Ipswich, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Norwich, Cambridge and King's Lynn. In addition, the trains ran to seaside resorts such as Hunstanton and Cromer. The GER also operated suburban services in north east London, with routes to Enfield, Chingford, Loughton and Ilford. The main workshops of the company were located in Stratford, on the site of today's railway station Stratford International.

The GER owned and also operated a number of ferries that traveled between England and the continent. Overall, these were 42 vessels during the life of the company. Even in 1923, a subsidiary was founded, the Great Eastern Train Ferries Ltd, 1924 with three retired from the War Office railway ferries -. Ferry Train No. 1 Train Ferry No.. 2 and No. Ferry. 3 - a rail ferry for freight traffic between Harwich and Zeebrugge took into operation. This company went into liquidation in 1932, and their ships came to the LNER.

With the entry into force of the Railways Act 1921 on 1 January 1923, the GER was merged with six other companies for the London and North Eastern Railway.