British Rail Class 458
The British Rail Class 458 is an electric multiple-unit passenger train built by Alstom at Washwood Heath between 1998 and 2002 for South West Trains. They were the first new fleet of trains to be delivered following the privatisation of British Rail.
The fleet of 30 four-car trains was ordered in 1997, with the first train delivered in October 1998. The trains entered passenger service between 2000 and 2003 and are maintained at Wimbledon depot. They form part of Alstom's Juniper family of trains, which also includes Classes 334 and 460.
Between 2013 and 2016, they were merged with the mechanically similar Class 460 fleet and reconfigured into 36 five-car units, designated Class 458/5, to improve capacity. The trains are now used by South Western Railway.
History
Introduction to service
A tender for a fleet of thirty of these four-car trains was placed by South West Trains in November 1996 to create extra capacity and to replace some of the ageing Class 411 units. A contract was signed between Alstom, the winner of the bid, Porterbrook, the rolling stock company and South West Trains, to which the trains would be leased. It was reported that the tender also took place to ease industry and political concern regarding the owner of South West Trains, Stagecoach Group's purchase of Porterbrook. Delivery of these units began in 1998.The units, numbered 458001-030, were delivered in SWT's mainline livery of mainly white, with a blue band, and red/orange 'swish' at cab ends. They are the only Juniper EMUs to feature end gangways. Each four-car unit was formed from two outer driving motors, an intermediate trailer, and an intermediate motor. The maximum speed when built was.
The class initially suffered from major technical problems, such as leaky roofs and failing electronics. The gangways were designed on the presumption that the trains would be semi-permanently coupled, so that coupling and uncoupling took thirty minutes. However, in existing operations trains had regularly been coupled and uncoupled; this had to be abandoned following the introduction of the new units. The protracted introduction led to South West Trains' decision to buy trains from the competing Siemens Desiro range in April 2001 for the replacement of the rest of the slam-door fleet.
Withdrawal from service
In 2004, when the full fleet was in service, reliability was so poor that SWT planned to return them to the leasing company and replace them with new Class 450 Desiro trains. At that time, the trains only managed an average of between failures, compared with an average of for a Class 450 Desiro and for the previous slam-door trains.In September 2005, two units were transferred to Gatwick Express, but returned later that year. By 2006, the poor reliability of the trains combined with the introduction of the new, more reliable British Rail Class 450 fleet meant that the trains had been withdrawn from regular service, with eight kept on standby. In July 2006, the Department for Transport refused to grant any further exemption from the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations, resulting in modifications to the passenger information system being made, with new wider LEDs fitted within the existing housing.
Return to service
As part of Stagecoach's bid for the replacement South Western franchise, it was planned that the Class 442 stock would leave the franchise, with Class 444 stock internally cascaded to replace the units, and that the Class 458s would return to service to maintain the overall fleet size. It was speculated that this was due to Porterbrook being unable to find any other rail operators willing to lease the Class 458 trains, and halving the rental costs. The Class 458s slowly re-entered service with the 23 units having re-entered service in January, sufficient for the last Class 442 to be withdrawn on 24 January 2007. By February 2007, reliability had improved with the Class 458 fleet managing between 5-minute delays caused by failures, in contrast to expectations that the units' reliability would further suffer following their lengthy period in storage.Refresh and reliability improvements
Between 2008 and 2010, Bournemouth Train Care Depot 'refreshed' the units. The 'refresh' included adding CCTV, new seats and tables in first class, an internal repaint, and Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations compliant lavatory, information display panels and door lights.In May 2010, two trains were in service with regenerative braking, the trial was a success with the rest of the fleet fitted by summer 2011. By the end of 2012, the fleet had achieved an average of between failures, becoming the most reliable fleet in Britain and the first fleet to achieve a 6-figure rating. As a result, the fleet was awarded a Modern Railways Golden Spanner award in the New Generation EMU category on 23 November 2012.
Lengthening to form Class 458/5
South West Trains and Porterbrook merged the Class 458 trains with the mechanically similar trains, largely unused since September 2012, to form five coach trains. Six of the eight Class 460 trains lost three carriages in the process, leaving them as 5-car trains that were also reconfigured as class 458/5 trains. The other two trains lost 6 carriages each, with the remaining 4 vehicles being decommissioned for spares. This £42m scheme was devised by Porterbrook, owner of both fleets. The "new" 5-car sets are designated Class 458/5 and coupled together to form 10-car trains to provide extra peak-time capacity on suburban services into Waterloo from the Hounslow, Weybridge and Windsor lines, using one of the five disused Waterloo International platforms, starting in 2014. The project was of SWT's aspiration to become a "10-car railway".Porterbrook signed the deal with SWT in January 2012. The work was carried out by Wabtec, Doncaster and Brush Traction, Loughborough on behalf of the original builder Alstom. The first trains were scheduled to arrive in May 2013, but due to protracted delivery, the work was slower than anticipated, and as a result the first trains did not enter service until March 2014.
As part of the re-build the driving vehicles were modified to include a more conventional design of gangway. The couplers are sourced from Voith. New Train Management System software was installed to improve reliability. Internally, a light refurbishment included reconfiguring the seating layout to provide more standing room for passengers. Traction units were re-geared from, not required on the services for which the trains were to be used, to maximum to avoid overheating. The sets were painted in the SWT blue livery as on the Class 450 units. Automatic Selective Door Opening was installed for use at a few suburban stations where it is not practical to lengthen platforms.
The first two of the 5-car sets were delivered in October 2013 and entered passenger service in March 2014.
Two 458/5 coupled units were involved in an incident at Windsor & Eton Riverside on 30 January 2015. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch determined this was caused by the power cables not being secured correctly when they were reconnected during the rebuild.
The project was completed on 30 March 2016, when the final converted unit, 458516, returned to South West Trains.