1st January 1997 - the Great Eastern Train Operating Unit became a private company operated by FirstBus under the name Great Eastern Railway.

Great Eastern, like Network SouthEast, didn't have any local DMU maintenance facilities and had no such trains of their own, therefore had to rely on neighbouring operator Anglia Railways in order to run the service on the Sudbury Line - their only line which required such arrangements.

No Trains Available for Great Eastern.

All was fine until September 1997, Anglia Railways were no longer able to provide a 153 to Great Eastern as they were refurbishing their units and now had a demand for the additional unit on one of their own lines, after searching, the only spare units available to hire were elderly single car Class 121 "Bubble Cars" from North London Railways which had been working the Bedford-Bletchley Route.

Units 121027/029 and 031 were hired to Great Eastern for use on the Sudbury line, on 9th August 1997 L131 (121031) worked from Bletchley to Colchester Depot – Colchester having been re-opened to deal with light maintenance of the 121s. The next day the unit worked three round trips on the branch - these were sampled by the Sudbury-Marks Tey Rail Users Association who were less than impressed with the quality of the train.

The 121s commenced full time service on 29th September 1997 for a period of up to 12 months. The 121s were old, dirty, disliked by passengers and very unreliable. despite receiving overhauls before coming to Essex, the units managed all sorts of faults, from broken gear boxes to broken drive shafts, and led to severe overcrowding at peak times, with passengers having to ride in the brake van area.
Where possible units were run in pairs however poor availability somewhat thwarted this plan.
When First Group took control of Great Western Trains a condition was imposed for Great Eastern to phase out their Class 312s by 2002 and the Class 121s by no later than October 1998.

The last day of Class 121s on the branch was Sunday 19th July 1998 - with two units L127 and L131 working together carrying a headboard "The Bubble has Burst", the third unit, L129 had already burst and been taken out of use due to damaged suspension.

Class 153s took over from 20th July 1998 onwards and Colchester depot was once again closed as the 121s returned to Bletchley.
More about the 121s can be found in the Information Archive.

Modernisation and Viaduct Works

18th May 1997 the level crossings at Mount Bures and Great Cornard were converted to Automatic Crossings, doing away with the crossing keepers, along with the Distant and Home Signals.
19th October 1997 saw the branch resignalled (along with the rest of the area) and the token system done away with, the branch now works as a One Train Working, with no train staff provided.

The Chappel Viaduct had been in need of major restoration works for many years, this began on 15th September 1997 with Jackson Contractors doing the work on behalf of Railtrack. This work began with a reenactment of the laying of the foundation stone.
More details about the Viaduct and this reenactment can be found in the information Archive.

1998 also saw a mile of track between Great Cornard Level Crossing and Sudbury replaced with new continuous welded rail, this coincided with the opening of a new foot crossing at the top of Kings Hill in Great Cornard, this had been used for many years as an unofficial short cut by local residents to gain access to the Cornard riverside.
This work was prompted by an unfortunate incident where a man walking his dog was hit by a train and killed. Cornard Parish Council had been asking for this crossing since the 1960s.

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