SWR ‘Arterio’
South Western Railway has named its new fleet ‘Arterio’. But what does it mean? And are the trains actually needed? PAUL CLIFTON reports
South Western Railway unveils the name for its ‘701s’ that will carry pasengers to the “heart of our network”.
A new train… and a new name. ‘Arterio’ is meant to suggest arteries, although wags on Twitter have been quick to come up with all manner of alternatives.
The name for the Derby-built Bombardier Class 701 fleet was unveiled on August 24 at South Western Railway’s Wimbledon depot, where the trains will be maintained.
“Arterio is about describing our role,” explains SWR Interim Managing Director Mark Hopwood.
“Carrying people through very busy arteries into the centre of London, where we see Waterloo as the heart of our network.”
The first of the £1 billion fleet will run on Reading to Waterloo services towards the end of the year. They are late, like previous variants of the Aventra model built for Crossrail, London Overground and Greater Anglia.
The fleet was due in service in December 2019, but so far only four of the 90 trains have been delivered. They are on test, and driver training has not yet begun.
“We are in the network testing phase, gathering data,” explains Bombardier Engineering Director Christian Roth.
“In due course we will make a submission for the train to the Office of Rail and Road. That is planned for mid-September. That’s when we start the driver training programme. And towards the end of the year we want to start the passenger service.
“The biggest cause of delay was the software development. These trains are very complex - they have a lot of new features, with the integration of new signalling technology as well.
“The Crossrail trains were delivered on time, but there was a long software integration period. That had a knock-on effect on the other orders. On top of that we had some production delay because of COVID. Production went to standstill. Then it took a considerable time to get back to full manufacture, because of supply chain shortages.”
The Arterio trains are designed for the doors to be opened and closed by the driver, as they are on near-identical Crossrail services from Reading, operating adjacent to the platforms where the SWR fleet will terminate.
They are the trains at the core of two years of damaging strike action by guards in the RMT union, who object to driver-controlled operation.
During lockdown, the RMT’s mandate for further strikes lapsed, meaning that a new ballot would be required. Hopwood says: “We have not yet concluded discussions with the union, but my wish is to find a way to do that.”
Testing of the trains is being carried out by drivers from GB Railfreight in Eastleigh. Operations Manager Stuart Priday says: “You’ll see us out and about on the network. The feedback I’m getting is that the drivers like them - they’re comfortable and everything is at their fingertips.
“It’s basically a big computer in front of you. It keeps an eye on the train and tells you everything. Pretty straightforward. It’s no different to any other train to drive, really - you pull the handle and it goes, you push back the handle and it stops.”
But have these new trains been overtaken by events? Are they even needed?
The key purpose of the Arterios is huge capacity. They are all about packing in passengers, with lots of room for standing - including between the vehicles (the trains are open all the way down).
But now, with empty platforms and social distancing on board the trains, services are hardly ever full.
These trains were ordered years before the pandemic, commissioned to tackle a problem that has (for now) gone away. Passenger numbers are no longer increasing at an unstoppable rate, driven by rising central London
employment. The extra capacity is not currently needed.
Says Hopwood: “It’s important to remember these trains are not just about capacity. They are about providing a much better environment for our passengers, and also about punctuality, reliability and delivering good journey times.
“We are carrying four times as many passengers as we did at the height of the lockdown. That number is growing all the time.”
But at the height of the lockdown, that number was fewer than 5,000 passengers a day. Now it is 20,000 a day. This time last year, it was 100,000 journeys a day. Business is, at best, running at 20% of previous levels. And with new ways of working, nobody is suggesting that the big numbers will return for years, on a network that principally serves daily commuting.
“I think as schools go back, we will see more parents going back to work. We need to be ready to cope with more passengers,” says Hopwood. “And these trains have a 30-year-plus life. We can’t judge what we are doing based only on what has happened in the past few months. We have to be ready with a network fit for the future. People will come back to the railway.”
Given the benefit of hindsight, would such trains be ordered now? The fares from fewer passengers will not cover the cost of these 750 carriages. In effect, the tab will be picked up by the public purse.
“I think we would want a fleet of new trains,” notes Hopwood.
“We have four different types of suburban trains. Some of them are 40 years old. It’s difficult to run as punctual and reliable a service as we want with all those different trains floating around. A fleet of trains that are all the same allows train planning benefits.
“We will have a big job training 1,300 train crew. But we know how we can do that, and we will have to get cracking. We have agreement with the drivers’ trade union. We will work hard on that through the autumn.”
Inside, plastic sheets have been removed from the seats. But temporary carpet protectors are still on the vehicle floor - these trains are still some months from entering passenger service. Hopwood says delivery will “ramp up” during late autumn.
Roth, in charge of the project for Bombardier, was previously in Hopwood’s position as managing director of the train operator, so a visit to Wimbledon depot was a return to home turf.
He concludes: “In the previous franchise there was a big drive to increase capacity. But it was not possible to come up with new trains, so there were a lot of smaller enhancement projects.
“This is now the opportunity to transform this franchise, with more capacity, better dwell times, better running times, and therefore bringing the reliability of the entire service up to a much higher level.”
“This is now the opportunity to transform this franchise, with more capacity, better dwell times and better running times.” Christian Roth, Engineering Director, Bombardier