a line towards Norwich and that led to great rivalry between the EUR and the ECR. The ECR trumped the EUR by taking over the Norfolk Railway, including Norwich Station, on 8 May 1848. The following year, the EUR started services to Norwich Victoria. The opening of Norwich Victoria on 12 December 1849 led to the ECR naming its station Norwich Thorpe. On 27 August 1851, EUR services from started serving the better-placed Thorpe station. By the 1860s, the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble and most were leased to the Eastern Counties Railway. They wanted to amalgamate them formally, but government agreement could not be obtained until an Act of Parliament on 7 August 1862, when the Great Eastern Railway (GER) was formed by the amalgamation. Actually, Norwich Thorpe and Norwich Victoria became GER stations on 1 July 1862, when the GER took over the ECR and the EUR before the Bill had received the Royal Assent. Great Eastern Railway (1862-1922) A decade after the GER was formed, the latter promoted a new line from Norwich to Cromer. That line was opened on 20 October 1874 and a new station was constructed at the junction of the Cromer line and Yarmouth & Norwich line. The new station, Whitlingham, stood between Norwich Thorpe and Brundall on the Yarmouth line. With traffic growing, it was apparent a new station was required in Norwich. It was built to the north of the original station, opening on 3 May 1886 and is the structure surviving today. The old terminus became part of the expanded goods facilities. The new station was built, at the cost of £60,000, by Messrs Youngs and Son, of Norwich, from designs by Messrs J Wilson and W. N. Ashbee, the company's engineer and architect respectively. The attractive station building was constructed around a central clock tower (the clock was supplied by Dixons and Co of London Street, Norwich) with two-storey matching wings either side. A portico was built onto the clock-tower section. There was a circulating area with a high ceiling and the roof was supported by ironwork supplied by contractor Barnard Bishop and Barnard. The roof extended partly down the platforms, which were then covered by canopies for part of their length. There were initially five platforms, with engine-release roads between platforms 2 and 3, and 4 and 5, which allowed locomotives to be detached from