well as various converted rail vehicles. A gun shed was built in 1941 and still exists at Levington and the top part of the building used to slide back to allow the gun to fire. The three LNER C14 Class locomotives that were based at Felixstowe (numbers 6123, 6128 and 6130) were put into store at Westerfield for most of the year so that traffic could be concentrated into heavier trains behind larger locomotives. Passenger trains were withdrawn from Felixstowe Pier; it was reopened on 3 June 1946. British Railways (1948–1997) In 1948 the LNER became the Eastern Region of British Railways. The docks were badly silted after the war and were damaged further by the fatal flood on 1 February 1953. Passenger trains to Felixstowe Pier had been withdrawn completely from 2 July 1951. The British Railways Modernisation Plan of 1955 proposed to electrify the branch in connection with similar work on the main line from Liverpool Street to Ipswich, although this failed to be completed north of Colchester at the time. Instead an accelerated diesel-powered service was introduced on 15 June 1959. Orwell station was closed, but the time from Ipswich to Felixstowe Town was reduced from 35 to 24 minutes which allowed a diesel multiple unit to work there and back within an hour. At the end of the year it was reported that the new service had increased the number of passengers carried by 70%. A further change was introduced on 2 November 1959 when daily services were withdrawn between Felixstowe Town and Felixstowe Beach, thereafter they were run only during the summer until the end of the 1967 season when it closed never to reopen. Earlier that year the branch had been converted to "Pay Train" operation, with all fares being collected by the guard so that staff were no longer needed at the stations other than signalmen. In 1964 it was reported that freight traffic on the branch included agricultural machinery, bricks, chocolate, coal and coke, custard and jelly, explosives, glassware, grain, motor cars scrap metal, sugar beet, and timber. Public freight facilities had been withdrawn from Westerfield and Trimley on 13 July 1964, and from both stations at Felixstowe on 5 December 1966. The following year saw the completion of a new container terminal at the docks which was served by Freightliner trains. This helped to contribute to the docks handling 2,019,270 tons