[1] Passenger services on the Breckland line are operated by Greater Anglia (which manages all of the stations), CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway and Great Northern.

The Eastern Counties Railway was at the same time building a route from Newport in Essex through Cambridge via Ely to Brandon.

[3][4] Although it was expected that locomotive changes would take place between the two companies at Brandon, where an engine house had been built, the Norfolk Railway in fact operated trains to Ely.

The line is double-track throughout but is only electrified between Cambridge and Ely, and also between Norwich and Trowse Junction, at 25 kV AC.

[1] Until 2012 the line retained its historic characteristics, with well preserved stations, semaphore signalling and, until spring 2009, lineside telegraph poles, along with sections of jointed rail on wooden sleepers.

However, the two-stage Ely–Norwich re-signalling programme in August and December 2012 involved the closure of the nine local mechanical signal boxes and removal of the seven sets of manually-operated wooden gates at level crossings.