These included continual conflict over working of other lines, suspicion and distrust of the joint committee, inadequate services to and from London, on-going litigation and law costs and a lack of progress on amalgamation.

Work at improving suburban services was put in hand and trains from London to Norwich speeded up to give businessmen and merchants more time to conduct their business.

Various directors were allocated specific responsibilities (generally running these through committees) leaving Goodson free to develop new schemes and represent the GER on lines where they had a financial interest.

The Great Eastern was clearly in an expansionist phase with further locomotives (forming the basis of standardisation over its disparate inherited fleet), carriages and wagons under construction.

Fish traffic from Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth was growing and money was being spent on stations, replacing wooden bridges and upgrading the track.

The following month the House of Commons rejected the joint GER/L&YR bill forcing the GER to restart negotiations with the Great Northern Railway.

This prompted an internal investigation and in a board meeting at the end of the month, an absent Jervis-White-Jervis was replaced by William Shaw as deputy chairman.

[10] The internal investigation concluded that many of Jervis-White-Jervis's concerns were relevant including borrowing more money than authorised and the poor deal the GER got on leasing the London and Blackwell Railway.

The GER did require some upgrading to deal with the increased levels of traffic – lines were doubled, additional passing loops provided, platforms extended and watering facilities improved (for both the iron and more conventional horses).

When the war started several jobs fell to the railway – reserve troops and naval personnel had to be returned to their units and this saw an upsurge in usage of normal services.

Various units were moved to the coast for defensive purposes and at the same time the government had started buying horses throughout the area leading to additional trains.

The company set up a section dedicated to the movement of military traffic and between 1914 and 1918 nearly 10.5 million men were moved on GER services as well as significant numbers of horses and supplies.

[25] In 1922, a large marble memorial was installed at Liverpool Street station commemorating GER staff who had answered the call of duty to fight but died in action in the First World War.

In 1922 the GER locomotive allocation across its sheds was: Cambridge - 178; Colchester - 47; Doncaster - 5; Ipswich - 131; King's Lynn - 37; Lincoln (Pyewipe Junction) - 12; Lowestoft - 22; March - 97; Norwich - 119; Parkeston - 20; Peterborough East - 86; Stratford - 555; Wisbech - 7; and Yarmouth - 20.

The GER always allowed contractors a certain amount of freedom within their specified design, and three early types evolved built by Saxby & Farmer, Stevens or McKenzie & Holland.

[needs update] Over the years the principal main line services between Norwich and Liverpool Street were routed via Ipswich or Cambridge, generally depending on the quickest journey time available.

There is some doubt as to the reliability of these times; as the writer Thackeray observed in The Lamentable Ballad of the Foundling of Shoreditch, "For even the Heastern Counties' trains must come in at last."

In the early days of the GER the 5 p.m. departure from Shoreditch (the terminus before Liverpool Street) took 52 minutes to reach Bishop's Stortford (average speed 38.5 miles per hour (62.0 km/h)) and 92 to get to Cambridge.

These used older rolling stock with high-density seating (often using wooden benches for ease of cleaning after being used by passengers from docks, factories and markets in dirty work clothes).

The GER itself invested in property development near its routes and in some cases even built its own housing on land purchased as part of railway construction.

Consideration was given to electrification, following the model of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway which had electrified its inner suburban routes between 1909 and 1912 and so been able to run both more and faster services on existing infrastructure.

Russell (former chief designer at Stratford Works), Thornton developed a way of comprehensively overhauling and optimising the Great Eastern's suburban service to increase capacity on the existing infrastructure with minimal investment.

The GER had already adopted the Westinghouse air brake due to its greater effectiveness and quicker response when making frequent stops in suburban services.

The new suburban services were popular with passengers and the press (which had frequently criticised the GER in the pre-WW1 years for overcrowding and slow journey times, even to the extent of running long-term campaigns against the company).

A new train set was built for this service in 1906 and generally operated in the following formation: ENGINE+THIRD CLASS BRAKE+CORRIDOR THIRD+OPEN THIRD+KITCHEN AND OPEN FIRST+SEMI-OPEN FIRST+SIX WHEEL BRAKE (this constituted the York section).

A redundant steam locomotive was employed in the task at Lowestoft and a number of fish and open carriage wagons were converted to saltwater tanks.

Another member of this class carried a cream livery "encircled by garlands of roses" when it was used to haul a special train in 1863 for the Prince and Princess of Wales (Edward VII and Queen Alexandria) after their marriage at Westminster Abbey.

On 10–11 December 1891, the Great Eastern Railway's Stratford Works built one of these locomotives and had it in steam with a coat of grey primer in just 9 hours 47 minutes; this remains a world record.

[citation needed] The locomotive then went off to run 36,000 miles (58,000 km) on Peterborough to London coal trains before coming back to the works for the final coat of paint.

This set, which also included such modern features as slam lock doors and gas tail lamps became the model for future suburban carriage design.