Southwestern Railways New Trains (the 701s)

701 032 just outside London Waterloo on one of its many testing and milage accumalation runs

South Western Railway is getting new trains (eventually). The 90 trains were ordered in summer 2017 and despite the first train being scheduled to start service in summer 2019, still to this day none of South Western Railway's Aventra's are in revenue earning passenger service. In fact the end of 2021 was the scheduled date for all the 775 carriages to be in service. This means these trains are very late and (most of) the trains they are going to replace are deteriorating pretty rapidly.

Aventra's

The Aventra is the platform created by Bombardier for commuter trains. The platform has proved very popular with orders from Crossrail as part of the Elizabeth Line, London Overground, Greater Anglia, South Western Railway, C2C, and West Midlands Trains (for both London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway).

Alstom took over Bombardier's transportation division last year and has inherited a number of problems with this platform.

701s among other trains at the newly built Feltham Depot

The first is the continuing software issues which have especially plagued the 345s for the Elizabeth Line and 710s for the Overground. These software issues have delayed the entry into service for many trains but the issues have been generally resolved in recent months, with all the 710s in service and operating mostly reliably.

The second is the problems with construction of the trains at Litchurch Lane in Derby. This was a growing issue when Alstom took over the platform with many partly finished carriages and a high number of defects in each completed carriage that needed to be resolved.

The 701s

A 701 stabled at Wimbledon Depot

In 2017 South Western Railway ordered 90 trains from Bombardier and designated them with the train number 701 (they also gave them the name Arterio in August 2020). The 90 trains consist of 60 trains with 10 cars (designated 701/0) and 30 trains with 5 cars (designated 701/5) making a total of 750 carriages.

The 701s are generally powered using shoe gear which picks up electricity from 3rd rail. And whilst every 701 has a pantograph well, ready for use on the overhead line network, pantographs were only installed on a small number of units for testing purposes.

Compared to other Aventra's the 701s have flatter cabs which accommodate an extra pair of seats but this has also, allegedly, made the cab uncomfortably small for drivers which has contributed to the delays.

It is also interesting to note that because of the paint scheme the first and last set of doors on each set are a different colour to the rest of the doors. This is probably the only mainline UK train that does this, except to indicate wheelchair accessible spaces or cycle spaces.

What The New Trains Replace

A 455 in Wimbledon Depot being stripped for parts to keep the other trains running

The answer to this has changed over the years with originally the plan being for the 701s to progressively remove the 455s, 456s, 458s, and 707s (despite not all the 707s actually being in service then). But over the years the order of withdrawal of these trains has changed with the 458s now going to be upgraded instead of scrapped.

The 707s are the newest trains on the South Western Railway network but more than half of them have already transferred to Southeastern (with the rest coming). All of the two car 456s were also withdrawn (with no current replacement) in early 2022. This does mean that the current trains are stretched thin with some of South Western's 450s (usually for middle and longer distance routes) being used to maintain service levels.

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