The Most Underrated Train In London

greetings viewers Hugh here coming to you from waterl station and well we're here today to ride what I think is the most underrated train in London the class 458 kadia Juniper let's go so we're on board the 458 here we're going to head to Wimbledon I think and I'm going to go over to voice over now to explain the history of these trains cuz surprisingly it's complicated so yeah the class 458 is a third rail emu that is part of aon's kadia family and has been running out of London Moralo since the year 2000 the kadia family is a common platform built by alstom across many countries but in the UK there are two main types the Cadia 1000 which is a family of diesel multiple units which consists of the class 175 which last round with transport for Wales and the goodlooking but flawed class 180 that is used by Grand Central the second type is the kadia Juniper which consists of the 4558 the class 460 which used to run with gaic Express and the class 334 used by Scot rail but in this video we're just going to focus on the 458 and 460 in 1996 the stage coach group won the bid for the southwestern franch as part of the privatization of British Rail at the time most of the commuter Services out of waterl were operated by Mark 1based emus like the class 411 421 and 423 with later Mark 3i based 455s bringing up the rear the new Southwest trains wanted new Rolling Stock immediately for this busy sector this led to them placing an order for a fleet of 30 class 4580 Juniper units from alom which recently acquired the former coach Builder Metro camel makers of nearly all London Underground stock and trains like the 156 and 4659 these new units were among the last to be assembled at the company's washwood heath plant in Birmingham alongside the first batch of class 390s the class 4580 entered service in February 2000 however to begin with the units were flawed with constant electrical issues and even water leakage issues also they featured a rather complex and in my opinion ugly gang way design these problems with the Juniper units ultimately influen Southwest trains into ordering new class 450 and 444 desos from Seamans in 2001 to replace the old mark1 emus at the same time a slightly improved version of the 458 designated as class 460 was delivered to gock express to replace its old Fleet of class 73s with 448 trailers eventually by 2005 Southwest trains had made plans to retire the 458 SL zeros due to their severe unreliability and with class 450s 444s and 442s being the backbone of the operator's longrange Services however at the last minute they decided to retain the 4580 resulting in an over supply of units which eventually led to the class 442s being left as spare gck Express eventually decided to take on the 442 to run its services leaving the 460s back with the leasing company Southwest trains decided to merge the 460s with the mechanically similar 4580 to create a new Suburban train known as the class 4585 following the withdrawal of the 460 from gwick Express in 2012 the conversion process began which resulted in significant changes to the entire fleet the cab front was completely redesigned with a new end gangway replacing the Impractical old one the interior of the 4580 coaches was converted from a 3x2 and standard class to 2x two in order to match the existing 460 coaches all units were five cars long which resulted in the 460 units being split up into different units and with the previously four car 4580 units having 1460 Carriage inserted per set the units were also repainted into a new livery to match the class 450 units the first 4585 entered service in March 2014 with the last 4580 running in November 2015 and the full conversion being completed by March 2016 however a year later Stage Coach lost the Southwest franchise to a joint bid by first group and MTR creating the new Southwestern Railway as part of the franchise commitment they intended to replace the existing Fleet of class 4555 for 456 458 and 707 trains with new class 701 adventurers from Bombardier however due to the strong after effects of covid SWR made the decision to retire the class 442 which had been brought back from gck Express following their replacement by class 387's instead of the 4558 this meant that the 4558 would be retained but converted to a long distance configuration and run alongside the class 444s on longer Express Services these new trains are dubbed class 4584 and began testing in October 2023 so with the 701 entering service last month I thought it was time we went for a ride on the class 4585 before it leaves the commuter lines so join me as we go for a ride on the class 458 this train is for Anton court so we're on our way just left waterl and I should point out I am in a 4580 Carriage the best way to tell shape of the door windows they're much longer on here compared to an X 460 Carriage seats are just about the same and the thing I really love about these trains is just how nice and soft the seats are it's just really really good and it's going to be a shame I think the uh new 484s are going to have different seats put in for longer distance but so yeah it's going to be sad to lose these so definitely come and ride one of these to have these seats while you can but these are certainly the best seats of any older style commut train in the city these seats do also come equipped with tray tables which is quite nice uh especially considering these do normally do the longer commu Journeys like the reading service so that's quite nice no armrests in this specific kind of carriage but uh we'll explain that in a minute we're at foxall also one of the best features of the 458 slz carriages is that you have Declassified first class I say Declassified is not used for first class fairs anymore but you get X first class which is fantastic I don't believe the 460 d coaches have them so yeah this is very very nice also in a rare feature for a train of this age the first class seats do actually have power outlets they don't have them in standard class I believe okay so I think I've shown you most of the features of a 458 slz Carriage slra as I'm in right now uh we're come up to Wimbledon and there I'm going to try and see if I can show you the uh X Jack Express 460 carriages is while they're similar because you know they were made by the same company same Factory just a couple of years apart there are some small differences that I would like to point out um but yeah I hope you see why these are really nice oh there's a Express printer going by but I do really really like these trains it's just going to be sad that they're not going to be running these commuter diagrams anymore but the 701s are decent units so doesn't speak to a m Wimbledon I'm Wimbledon and uh don't think there's going to be a 458 coming back up into London for quite a bit so I'm just going to be getting a different train as you can see right there back to clamp him and uh we're going to try and find a fully x460 458 unit because the one I was just on there was a 458 sl0 with two uh class 460 coaches inserted in but let's see if we can find a actual X gwk Express unit anyway let's get on this thing we just left Wimbledon we're heading towards hfield and we're going to be passing Wimbledon Park Depo where apparently there might be some converted 458 setting there I don't know I've looked a couple of times in the past and I haven't seen them but uh let's have a look to see some future 458s 2,000 years later okay so it's about half an hour later and uh it's been a mess cuz there's a lot of disruption Out of Water L due to signaling problems so I'm on a different train now but we're heading into waterl and hopefully there will be a x460 unit in there that we can uh quickly have a look at it's been a mess to film this but we should find it later that was a long search but we finally found a 460 458 let's get on board so at first glance the first major thing you'll notice about a 460 Carriage is that the door windows are smaller and the color of the seat backs is different have one thing I forgot to show on the previous 4 high8 and in our SWR Fleet review which was quite surprising is the 458 toilet let's amend that now so it appears that the um accessible toilet back there is out of order as it said it was engaged but the open Button was lit up so I think it was broken so we'll just use the manual one um it's basic toilet really it's very very Airline like um yeah it's all right I'm sitting in the same place where the uh Declassified first cabin was in The 45580 Carriage but it's just got standard seats because I believe gck Express had its own unique first class on the 460s so the only major difference is a bigger table and armrests and that's about it so unfortunately if you're running a 460 train no X first class for you well other than that there's not really that much else different from the other 4580 carriages so I think I've said enough about this train I do really really like it I think it's uh absolutely fantastic but do go for a ride on it very very soon because they're being converted into longer distance trains and on the 4558 SL zero units at least the 460 carriages which you can tell by the different window frames are going to be removed to make them four cars again so definitely go for a ride on them while you [Music] can so I'm outside clap Junction Station uh I really like the 4558 it's a fantastic train shame that you know in its current fashion is a commuter train it's not going to be around much longer so definitely give it a ride give it a ride more than the 4555 I think so yeah really nice train 4558 anyway thanks for watching guys see you in the next video bye-bye and go ners

Channel: The TfL Three

Views: 6,453

Keywords:

Id: pvuspLLHTDE

Length: 12min 26sec (746 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024