Southern Electrics: The Second Generation

By Roger Palmer

The Southern Electric system was a self contained, roughly triangular area of lines with its apex in London and its base running along the south coast from Kent to Weymouth. It also made a couple of forays into Middlesex. Here, in some 196 previously unpublished color photographs, is shown not only the variety of unit types that were around during the first twenty years since railway privatization, but also the fact that on some services, Southern Electric types have penetrated the Home Counties whilst others have migrated to join their ranks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Oct 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781526711960

Roger Palmer

Roger Palmer has no idea of what stimulated his interest in railways. His earliest recollections are of seeing blue Duchesses flashing past a gap in the houses at the end of the street where he lived and of the first two engines he “officially spotted” when he started collecting train numbers and duly underlining his sightings in his Ian Allan ABC.His parents gave him a Brownie Cresta camera when he was 14 and two years later, when he had started full time work he bought a 35mm Agfa Silette which itself was replaced by an SLR Pentax some ten years later. From the 1970s he travelled extensively over the British rail system accumulating photographs all the while and for a brief period from the mid-1990s he wrote book reviews for the magazine British Railway Modelling. In 2006 his first book Southern Electric Slam Door Stock – The Final Years was published.His photographic activities continue, and whilst highly sceptical about rail privatisation, believes that the post-Nationalised railway will be a golden era for railway historians of the future as train operating company’s franchises come and go and the units themselves are in a constant state of flux due to changes in liveries and various upgrades and refurbishments.

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INTRODUCTION

A visit to one or other of London’s termini could, in say, the 1950s or 1960s, be a noisome affair with the general din emanating from steam trains with safety valves blowing off, steam cocks opening and the occasional bark from engines as they routinely performed their duties; add to this the constant banging and slamming of carriage doors and the hubbub of people trying to get to their train and it would not take too much imagination to realise that stations were hardly places of peace and quiet, but quite the opposite.

But since the elimination of steam in 1968 and of slam-door trains in 2005, all that can be heard is the bleep-bleep- bleeping of carriage doors as they are about to be shut by a seemingly invisible force and followed by a dull thwack as the doors finally close, only to be followed by a sound which is more reminiscent of aliens landing in some TV science fiction programme rather than a train setting off on its journey. Compared with the railway of the middle of the twentieth century, it is possible for stations to be engulfed by an eerie quietude but for the constant repetitive announcements which are not only an assault on the ears but an insult to one’s intelligence and integrity. But the ears are not the only senses that have to put up with interruptions through these persistent announcements; the eyes, too, have to cope with the bright, flashy, gaudy colours of the privatised railway companies. These range from the bright red of South West Trains’ suburban units and dark blue of their middle-distance services to the consistent and tastefully restrained retro-green of the Southern Railway. Add to this the almost colourless South Eastern livery and the myriad colours the class 319 units found themselves in during the period under consideration and the brashly vulgar mauve/blue with yellow doors and lime green flash at the lower part of the carriage of Silverlink’s trains and one feels that even the garish colours of Network South East of later British Rail days was almost tasteful.

The late and not-very-lamented Silverlink company has been deliberately mentioned here because it has been given ‘honorary Southern Electric’ status due to its trains working into Clapham Junction over the West London Line. This line since November 2007 has been operated by London Overground, a newcomer to the railway scene whose principal raison d’être has been to act as an interface between London’s Tube system of lines (the Underground) and the mainstream railway. It operates not only the West London Line, but also trains from Richmond to Stratford, Highbury & Islington to West Croydon and Crystal Palace over the former trackbed of the old Dalston Junction to Broad Street line with a connection near Shoreditch and on to New Cross and New Cross Gate. It also operates between Euston and Watford Junction and, from 9 December 2012, a service has been opened up between Surrey Quays and Clapham Junction. The whole operation uses class 378 Capitalstar units so the sphere of ‘honorary’ Southern Electrics seems ever to expand. And in an almost reciprocal arrangement, class 377 units worked up the West Coast Main Line as far as Milton Keynes on a service from Brighton and for a brief time from 26 January 2009, class 350 Desiro units worked an hourly Milton Keynes to East Croydon service. This arrangement barely saw the year out as class 377 units held sway on these services from the latter part of 2009 onwards until the autumn of 2014 when newly introduced five-car class 377/7s came on the scene.

Much has changed on the lines running south of the Thames since privatisation of the mid-1990s: Connex South East and Connex South Central have both lost their franchises whilst the ever-growing First Group has taken over the newly reinstated link between Farringdon and Blackfriars and over the former London, Chatham & Dover Railways’ City Line through Herne Hill and on to Sutton. It is here that all the dual-powered class 319 units work and since 2009 a further batch of class 377 units has been added to help meet increasing passenger demand. Southern Electric’s second generation of units perhaps commenced in the very late 1960s when British Railways decided to replace the existing slam-door units with a fleet of trains incorporating a substantial number of design changes. These included the provision of sliding doors and all vehicles being powered. The first unit arrived at the Southern Region in May 1971 and ran intensive trials. At the end of 1971, a second four-car set started running test runs firstly on the Waterloo to Alton line before moving on to the Hampton Court, Shepperton and Chessington lines.

Although these two four-car units were taken out of regular passenger service in October 1976, they paved the way for subsequent unit types which did not necessarily operate on the Southern Region. The class 508s were originally intended for use on Merseyside but started their careers as four-car sets working on lines out of Waterloo in the latter part of 1979. When purpose-built class 455s were available in sufficient numbers by the end of 1984, the 508s were transferred to Merseyside to work alongside the similarly-styled class 507 units. However, the authorities on Merseyside needed three-car trains; the fourth vehicle was inserted into a batch of 20 units that entered service in 1985 and were given the classification 455/7; these can easily be identified as the roofline of the train is uneven.

Subsequent designs saw the introduction in 1988 of the luxurious Wessex Electrics used on Waterloo-Bournemouth-Weymouth services and, in 1991, of the two-car class 456s in order to strengthen eight-car trains to those of ten cars The Wessex Electrics were taken out of service from South West Trains in 2007 and transferred to Victoria to Gatwick and occasional Victoria to Brighton fast services after extensive refurbishment. The suburban lines of the former South Eastern & Chatham Railway became the domain of Networker classes 465 and 466 between 1991 and 1994. Long distance trains working from Charing Cross and Victoria were covered by Electrostar classes 375 and 377 and both classes were divided into sub-classes for specific local requirements.

Curiously there have been conflicting reports as to whether or not a unit of one type could be coupled to a unit of the other. Well known author and follower of the modern railway scene, Colin J. Marsden, regarded the class 458 Juniper units as being one of the ugliest and most troublesome ever to run. They were a long time entering traffic, were racked with technical problems and were temporarily taken out of service in late 2005 having fallen foul of the Government’s Disability Discrimination Act due to their passenger information displays being deemed to be too small. However, their stint out of traffic was short as they were back in service by mid-2006 on Waterloo to Reading and the occasional Ascot to Guildford workings.

The thirty class 458 units have remained a minority class on South West Trains as the majority of their electric services are in the hands of class 450 and class 444 Desiro units which, with their air-conditioning and moderate standards of space and comfort, have proved popular with the travelling public. There is no doubting the fact that the second generation of Southern Electrics give passengers a smoother ride compared with what went before, but there must be those people out there who somehow miss the rattle and bang of say a 4CIG as it charges up the old Brighton main line on a journey from the Sussex Coast. One may also miss the ample leg room and space enough to move the elbows and generally fidget about as the newer, high-tech units have been designed to cram as many people in them with the minimum amount of luggage, as accommodation for anything bigger than a laptop is woefully inadequate, especially on the class 377s where the luggage racks above the seating cannot even accommodate a medium-size suitcase.

Whilst this book is designed to show what was around in the first decade and a half or so of this century and most of the trains illustrated here