BILLIONS of pounds worth of investment will transform train services, according to the Abellio Greater Anglia’s boss.

Abellio was announced as the preferred bidder for the Eastern region by the Department of Transport earlier this month with a contact until 2025.

As part of the deal, a new £1 billion fleet of trains will be built and rolled out between January 2019 and September 2020 and Jamie Burles, the managing director of Abellio Greater Anglia, said it will make a massive difference to commuters travelling between London and Colchester and beyond.

He said: “It is going to be massive and transformational.

“We have a situation where the average age of a train in our fleet is 27 years old - it is an easy and simplistic analogy to make, but if you compare the amount of problems you have with a 27-year-old car compared to a newer model and it is a very similar situation.

“Various kinks, technical problems, deficiencies and operating issues are being designed out year on year.

“We are going to go from one of the very oldest fleets to the newest in the space of two-and-a-half years.”

Abellio, the international arm of Dutch rail operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen, took over the Greater Anglia line in 2012 and was awarded a short-term two year franchise, later extended to 2016.

Tenders for the long-term franchise were accepted in the summer of 2015 and Mr Burles said it was a relief to have won the battle ahead of FirstGroup and National Express, and the long-term deal would allow investment to continue under the name Abellio East Anglia.

He said: “I think it's happiness but for the region, rather than necessarily ourselves.

“The region has waited for a long time for a long-term franchise, and the reason it is so important is because the government will only unlock the purse strings when there is someone in there for the long haul.

“Our region has had short-term franchises since before my time and for a long time before that.

“In our case there is a lot of billions of pounds involved – for example £1.4billion worth of new trains.”

Mr Burles has been working with Abellio for two years and believes a number of positive changes have been made to get train services back on track.

He said: “The biggest challenge in the last two years has been increasing the access to funds.

“For example the carriages are a lot cleaner than they were – we have employed 100 extra cleaners since I arrived.

“Our stations are improving and we are seeing the benefit of that coming now.”

Mr Burles admitted work needed to be done to improve reliability on the network.

He said: “Reliability does need to improve – I will be honest and say that – and in the last few months we have been improving on that a little bit.

“A message to all our customers is we are working hard to make our services more reliable.”

Mr Burles added Abellio was working together with Network Rail to try and improve punctuality.

He said: “The track and the signals and such like are the responsibility of Network Rail and they are also investing a huge amount of money to improve infrastructure which is great to see.

“We look forward to them spending money and working in partnership with them.

“I would say our relationship with them is good - there is no problem between us and Network Rail.

“We are both hell-bent on improving the reliability for customers.

“We are moving forward but we want to make every train we operate run on time.

“Is that possible? You look at the best operators in the world in Japan and they cannot do it, but if you aim for it, then you will end up in a very good place.”

Mr Burles added the new fleet would be key to improving punctuality.

He said: “That is where the £1.4billion worth of new trains will come in.

“You could not get a bigger investment in the country in terms of railway – it is the biggest fleet replacement in the country.

“These are going to be state-of-the-art trains with Wi-Fi, air conditioning and anything else passengers could want.”