The EUR and I&BR were worked as one from 1 January 1847, and formal amalgamation was obtained by Act of 9 July 1847. The Eastern Union Railway was taken over by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1854. By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble, and most were leased to the ECR; they wished to amalgamate formally, but could not obtain government agreement for this until 1862, when the Great Eastern Railway was formed by amalgamation. Thus Bury St Edmunds became a GER station in 1862.