Five-year £100m refurbishment of Govia Thameslink trains nears completion

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and rolling stock company Porterbrook are nearing the end of their huge Project Aurora fleet modernisation programme, and are preparing for the final Class 377 and ‘387’ Electrostars to exit GTR’s Selhurst Depot in South London - on-time and on budget.

Project Aurora began in 2020, with Porterbrook investing £100 million into modernising the fleet - initially 270 trains and 1,084 vehicles used by Southeastern and Southern, as well as GTR itself.

While the initial scope for the refurbishment programme finished in February 2025, work has still been continuing at Selhurst.

That’s because the scope increased with the inclusion of 23 Class 375/5s and 11 sets of Class 387s to be used by GTR.

That means that once the project is completed in the next few weeks, a total of 304 trains and 1,222 vehicles will have been refurbished at Selhurst over the past five years.

GTR began cascading its first units back into service in 2021, initially setting up to refurbish two units per week at the depot. In 2023, it completed its 100th overhaul, and scaled back its programme to refitting one unit per week in late 2024.

That refit has included new wiring, Passenger Information Screens, On-Train Data Recorder (OTDR) systems, plug sockets at every seat, brighter LED lighting, and new fixings throughout the carriages.

The team has also installed CCTV cameras on the front of the units. This has included a forward-facing camera and a track-facing camera, which had initially only been intended for 10% of the fleet, but feedback from the initial cascade encouraged Porterbrook to invest in new camaras for all the fleet.

Southeastern Project Director Alistair Hinze told RAIL: “It has been hard in places with many moving parts, but overall the team has worked exceptionally hard to get this over the line.”

Porterbrook and GTR have worked closely together on the project, alongside Alstom (it purchased the initial ‘Electrostar’ manufacturer Bombardier in 2021), which has visited the depot regularly to follow the project’s progress.

Hinze added that Alstom’s knowledge proved invaluable as the project teams learned more about the units: “We realised that many units were not quite what they appeared to be. All the sub-classes were slightly different in subtle ways, but that added complications that we had to really work on in order to overcome them. We got there, though, and nothing really slowed us down once we understood the units.”

The project has remained on time and on budget throughout, despite challenges.

Stuart Darney, Project Manager at Porterbrook, told RAIL: “Considering we’ve had challenges, especially with COVID-19, it’s a real testament that we’ve kept on track.

“It’s a huge investment by Porterbrook, but we’ve been confident from the outset that it would be worthwhile. And the feedback we’ve had has been excellent.”

Once Project Aurora is completed, GTR will have 203 Class 377s and 65 Class 387s, and Southeastern 36 Class 377s.

Additionally, as part of the wider Electrostar family, GTR will have 30 Class 379s and Southeastern 112 Class 375s.