South Western Railway has not ruled out using Class 458/4s on the express services for which they were originally refurbished, even as the fleet is rolled out across its suburban network.
South Western Railway has not ruled out using Class 458/4s on the express services for which they were originally refurbished, even as the fleet is rolled out across its suburban network.
Alstom has completed a £25 million upgrade of the 28 Porterbrook-owned sets at its Transport Technology Centre in Widnes. The work has involved fitting 2+2 seating, reconfiguring vehicles to allow for faster acceleration, and overhauling powered wheelsets to increase their top speed from 75mph to 100mph.
The work, announced in 2021, was supposed to have begun the following year, before delays in the introduction of the Class 701 Arterio fleet pushed the programme back. The first refurbished unit entered service in June 2024. The final unit (458414) was unveiled on December 12.
The initial plan was to run them on the Portsmouth Direct Line. However, this has been dropped and the fleet is currently deployed on SWR’s Waterloo to Weybridge via Brentford, Waterloo to Twickenham, and Hounslow Loop services.
SWR Head of Fleet Delivery James Wale said: “Following the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent changes in customer travel patterns, the fleet is operating services on our suburban network, as we continue the rollout of our fleet of Arterio trains. We continue to monitor the demand on the Portsmouth route to establish if the trains will need to work this service group in the future.”
As of late December, 16 sets were in traffic, with four more due to be accepted early in 2025. Wale said that route gauging and clearance work to enable the ‘458/4s’ to be used across more suburban routes was under way. Once complete, SWR will look to have 24 in service with four units kept spare or for maintenance.
The future of the fleet is unclear, as SWR begins the long-delayed introduction of 90 Arterios for its suburban network.
The Class 701s were originally supposed to start carrying passengers in November 2019, but just five are currently in traffic. Ten more are due to join them over the next six months, and it could take two years for the whole fleet to enter service.
Asked by RAIL if SWR will use the Class 458/4s for a long-enough period to consider getting value for money for the £25m refurbishment, Wale replied: “Yes - we’ve enjoyed really positive feedback from the customers who are benefiting from these units on the network.”
The Class 458s were built by Alstom at Washwood Heath between 1998 and 2002. Originally a fleet of 30 four-car trains, a fifth carriage was later added when the similar Class 460s were withdrawn from Gatwick Express.
The entire fleet (and the ‘460s’) were reconfigured to make 36 five-car Class 458/5s. Twenty-eight of those have now become four-car ‘458/4s’.
Wale said SWR continues to use a handful of unrefurbished ‘458/5s’, adding: “Our strategy is to retain and keep these in service on existing diagrams until such time as we either no longer require them (due to Class 701s entering service) or they reach their next heavy maintenance intervention, at which point we’ll return them to Porterbrook.”
Three out of eight units have now gone back.
A Porterbrook spokesman said the company was “having conversations with operators about the future deployment” of the Class 458/5s.
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PL Consulting - 04/02/2025 11:15
One would have thought it more appropriate to have the 458/5s on the Portsmouth route straight away, and move the suburban 450s to suburbia, but no doubt SWR had good reason.