East Anglian MPs are lobbying transport ministers in a bid to ensure vital improvements to allow more freight from Felixstowe to travel by train are not halted because of spending cuts.
The cross-country link from Felixstowe and Ipswich to the midlands and north of England via Peterborough has two major bottlenecks - at Haughley Junction, near Stowmarket, and Ely.
Network Rail has been working on plans to ease these bottlenecks for many years. Haughley Junction is a comparatively easy solution to re-double a single-track crossing created in the 1960s. That would cost an estimated £20million.
However, sorting out Ely North Junction where tracks split to go towards Peterborough, Kings Lynn and Norwich is a much more complex and expensive project with costs estimated at nearly half a billion pounds.
The present configuration at the junction means only six trains an hour each direction can use the junction and it has been operating at capacity for many years.
Proposed improvements would almost double the capacity. Without the work, it is impossible for Greater Anglia to meet its franchise commitment to run an hourly service between Ipswich and Peterborough.
Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP Dr Dan Poulter said it was vital to get the work done to improve links between the north and midlands to Britain's most important container port at Felixstowe.
He said: "We need to get more freight carried by rail and without these improvements it can't happen. It's also important for the main line to London because without improvements to the cross-country route freight trains will continue to use the main line to the capital.
"And it is clear that many of the delays on the main line are caused by issues with slower-moving freight trains so it would be good to move more of them away from that route."
The worries were triggered by a letter transport minister Wendy Morton sent to the East of England All Party Parliamentary Group, in which she said some projects will have to be “cancelled or indefinitely paused”.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Transport said an update on the plans for Ely and Haughley was expected "shortly" - but one element of this could be embarrassing for one high-profile politician.
When she was first elected as MP for South West Norfolk in 2010, one of Liz Truss's first campaigns was to improve Ely North junction which is vital for train services to towns in her constituency.
Could one of the first acts of a Truss Premiership in September 2022 be to park the improvement plans in the Civil Service sidings?
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