Private company

First Great Eastern

Logo: multimania, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3

British train operating company, 1997–2004

First Great Eastern was a British train operating company that ran the Great Eastern franchise in the East of England from January 1997 until March 2004. It was owned by FirstGroup.2 It is part of FirstGroup plc.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 20, 2026.

Overview

1997Founded1

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360111 at Ipswich
Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons5

First Great Eastern was a British train operating company that ran the Great Eastern franchise in the East of England from January 1997 until March 2004. It was owned by FirstGroup.2

Corporate structure

First Great Eastern is part of a group headed by FirstGroup plc. 56 entities, 5 countries on record. Switch between the flow chart and the network, and select any entity to see its details.

Built from parent and subsidiary links from GLEIF, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (CC0); subsidiaries, stakes and holdings from Wikidata (CC0). Each entity in the chart links to its source.

Products and brands

First Great Eastern operated all stops and limited stops services on the Great Eastern Main Line from London Liverpool Street to Southend Victoria, Southminster, Braintree, Colchester Town, Clacton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze, Harwich Town and Ipswich. It also ran services on the Romford to Upminster Line and the Gainsborough Line from Marks Tey to Sudbury.

From Wikipedia’s article on First Great Eastern, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Subsidiaries and ownership

Parent company

From Wikidata.1

Timeline

  1. 1997Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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