British Rail Class 456

Description

24 two-car units were built as direct replacements for the elderly Class 416 2EPB units which operated on the Central Division of the Southern Region of British Rail. Units were delivered into traffic painted in Network SouthEast blue, red and white livery. Units were numbered in the range 456001-024. Each unit consisted of two carriages; a driving motor and a driving trailer. The technical description (when new) of the unit formation is DMSO+DTSOL. Individual carriage numbers were as follows:

When first introduced, the units suffered from many technical and reliability problems, which delayed the replacement of the 2EPB units. However, once they settled down the units were used on many services, including London Bridge to London Victoria via Crystal Palace, and via Denmark Hill and London Victoria to Horsham. Before the lines closed in 1997 to allow the building of Tramlink, Class 456 units worked services on the West Croydon to Wimbledon Line before being allocated to Victoria - Epsom via Sutton and West Croydon, especially at peak times, as well as services from Epsom Downs and Dorking.

The trains then moved to South West Trains, being part of a 455+456+456 set to cover for the refresh of the company's Class 455 sets, before moving to a ten car 455+455+456 set.

Current operations

Since the privatisation of Britain's railways, the entire Class 456 fleet passed into the Southern (formerly known as South Central) franchise, which was originally won by Connex South Central. Only one unit, No. 456024, was repainted in white and yellow Connex livery, when it was named Sir Cosmo Bonsor after a chairman of the South Eastern Railway. The rest of the fleet had remained in NSE livery, until summer 2006 when the fleet started to be repainted.

In 2000, Connex lost the South Central franchise to the Go-Ahead Group, who rebranded the company as Southern in 2004.

The units have ended their career with Southern, as their operations on its Metro routes have been replaced by Class 455 and 377/6 trains. Around half the units are currently with South West Trains for driver training, with the other half being refurbished and repainted into the South West Trains red Metro livery.

The units were introduced onto the South West Trains Guildford-Aldershot-Camberley-Ascot route in March 2014, replacing more modern Class 458 trains with toilets and air conditioning. All have now been refurbished and are running in the South West Trains livery, and are fully refurbished internally.

Refurbishment

In March 2005, No. 456006 was hauled away to Wolverton where it has been studied for corrosion assessment. This caused some doubt as to whether they would be refurbished. However, in a statement in April 2006 Southern said the class would receive a 'refresh', which meant they would not receive a refurbishment as major as the 455s, since the 456s are 10 years newer and already have high-backed seats (although of a different design). Also, on the newly released sets, new CCTV cameras and flooring have been installed; this was not mentioned on the original refurbishment plan.

All units were instead 'refreshed' and have been painted into Southern green colours. No. 456006 has been completed in a new, one-off promotional livery for rail safety on the Southern network. 456013 will now have an experimental cab-cooling system installed and 456022 will have some experimental air-conditioning fitted, in an effort to make drivers' jobs more comfortable.

Southern removed the toilets from the trains, to provide more capacity. Despite this the Class 456 EMU trains lost two seats from each pair, due to a space being cleared for wheelchairs and pushchairs.

After the units transferred to South West Trains, a full refurbishment is underway in Wolverton where Class 456s received a new exterior livery and also a refurbished interior with new seating.

Criticism

Southern's refurbishment of the sets wasn't as extensive as with the British Rail Class 455 EMU trains, due to the 456s being newer. Previously, there were no electronic announcement boards on board, which meant that when they worked in multiple with the 455s (usually to form 6-car trains), none of their Passenger Information System visual boards worked and the automatic announcements could not be played. However this was rectified in 2009, when a Passenger Information System was fitted to the trains. Regardless however, the units were later refurbished by South West Trains when they were transferred over to them, in the style of the company's existing refurbished Class 455 sets.

Future

On 8 May 2012 it was announced by the DfT that the entire fleet of 24 2-car Class 456s would transfer to South West Trains (SWT) in 2014, to be used in conjunction with SWT's Class 455 fleet on London inner-suburban lines. SWT will be using the 456s to enhance peak-hour Metro services through Wimbledon from 8 to 10 coaches and to provide two additional morning peak services from Raynes Park to Waterloo. These changes will take place from December 2014. Class 456s will be repainted in the red "Metro" version of SWT livery to match the Class 455 with South West Trains and will be refurbished to have a similar interior to the Class 455 before entering service with SWT between March 2014 and December 2014. It was announced that the 456 fleet will retain its standard traction equipment when transferred to SWT. This will leave them as the only fleet on SWT to be powered by conventional DC traction gear.

The Southern services on the South London Line were withdrawn in 2012 and replaced by a new London Overground service, the East London Line, operated using new air-conditioned 5-car Class 378 units. Southern also received 26 new 5 car Class 377/6 units and these entered service at the end of 2013, in place of 92 cascaded carriages promised for extra capacity. This gives a total of 50 replacement carriages in addition to the 92 carriages for extra capacity, leaving the 48 Class 456 carriages surplus to requirements at Southern.

South West Trains

The first units entered service with South West Trains on 23 March 2014 between Ascot and Guildford. They initially ran in pairs (i.e. 2 x 2 car) still in Southern's green livery, but without fleet names. 10 units were required to provide the half-hourly service. The one train per day from Clapham Junction (07:45) to Guildford via Ascot was also operated by 2 x 456's, but the trains that run through to Waterloo during the rush hours, continue to use Class 458 trains. The class 456 trains are the main units on the line, but occasionally Class 450 sets operate solely on the line.

South West Trains has subsequently started to use the Class 456s on services from London Waterloo to Dorking, Guildford (via Epsom or via Cobham and Stoke D'Abernon), Chessington South, Hampton Court, Shepperton and Woking stopping services, and Guildford to Ascot via Aldershot, including workings coupled to other Class 455 units.