When Dutch Railways-owned Abellio was awarded the franchise to run passenger trains in East Anglia in 2012, there was optimistic talk of a transformation of services - but how successful has it been?

Last week's sale of Abellio UK to its own British managers by Dutch Railways has prompted a great deal of speculation about the future of the region's rail network - but it's also right to look back on what has been achieved over the last decade.

To be honest the transformation over the last 10 years hasn't been as great as we were promised by the Great Eastern Taskforce back then. Trains aren't regularly travelling from London to Ipswich in 60 minutes. There is no hourly service from Ipswich to Peterborough. And fares have gone up quite steeply.

But none of these issues can really be laid at the feet of Greater Anglia as a train operator. Its role in the rail industry does mean it is its public face - but the problems that have beset services have largely been out of its control.

When it took over Greater Anglia in 2012, Abellio inherited an ageing fleet of trains. Intercity services were made up of 1970s carriages pulled by locomotives from the 1980s.

The trains were spacious and comfortable - but were not really designed for services in a region like this.

Branch line trains were operated by diesel units from the 1980s that were designed to be cheap and not particularly durable - and were certainly feeling like that by the 2010s!

And suburban electric services were in the hands of a variety of different types of units built between the 1980s and the early 2000s which each had its own idiosyncrasies that mechanics had to get to grips with.

When Abellio-controlled Greater Anglia was granted a long-term franchise to run the region's trains in 2016 it announced a £1.4bn programme of replacing every passenger train - Stadler trains (which were already on their way to the Netherlands) for the Intercity and regional services and British-built Bombardier trains for suburban services.

Would the region have seen new trains on every route had it not been for Greater Anglia's Dutch involvement? I very much doubt it.

The previous franchise-holders, British-owned Anglia Railways, First Great Eastern, and National Express had brought in a handful of new trains and a few innovative services (the Chelmsford to Basingstoke route didn't last long) but were hardly transformative.

Anyone now catching an Intercity train from Ipswich to London or a local train from Ipswich to Lowestoft (basically the same train internally) can hardly fail to be impressed by the comfort and smoothness of the ride.

The new Aventra suburban trains are rather more "Marmite" in their appeal.

Personally I think they are an improvement on the older trains they replace - their seats do look very hard but are surprisingly comfortable with their ergonomic design. I'm not sure that I'd want to be squashed on one for a busy rush-hour service all the way from Ipswich or Clacton to London though!

The problems and disappointments we've had over the last decade tend to have come from Network Rail and the government.

It is the rail infrastructure, and the lack of improvements in places like Chelmsford, Haughley, Norwich and Ely that have prevented significant improvements in journey times.

And it is government fares policy that has seen the cost of tickets rise - it isn't something the train operating companies that actually collect them have much say on.

The railways are now entering a new era with every aspect of their operation being run by the government - as happened for most of the existence of British Rail.

Under the new regime there will be no opportunity or incentive for companies to innovate and take bold investment decisions like we saw from Abellio a decade ago.

East Anglia is lucky. It enters the new era with a new fleet of trains that should be able to run for many decades.

For that we have to be grateful that Dutch railways, through its Abellio subsidiary, became involved in our rail network a decade ago.

It's just a pity that the UK government and its Network Rail subsidiary weren't able to match the Dutch commitment to our rail services!