British Rail Class 456
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| British Rail Class 456 | |
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 Class 456 units in Southern livery entering West Croydon. |
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| In service | 1990 - Current |
| Manufacturer | BREL |
| Refurbishment | 2005 |
| Number built | 24 Trainset |
| Formation | 2 cars per trainset |
| Operator | Southern |
| Specifications | |
| Maximum speed | 75 mph (121 km/h) |
| Weight | Total: 72.5 tonnes |
| Braking system | Air (westcode) |
The British Rail Class 456 electrical multiple units were built by BREL at York Works from 1990-91. 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 of the unit formation is DMSO+DTSO. Individual carriage numbers were as follows:
- 64735-64758 - DMSO
- 78250-78273 - DTSO
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 London Victoria to Horsham. Before the lines closed in 1997 to allow the building of the Croydon Tramlink, Class 456 units worked services on the line from West Croydon to Wimbledon. Recently, more 456's have recently been allocated to Victoria - Epsom via Sutton and West Croydon, especially at peak times, as well as services from Epsom Downs and Dorking.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Refurbishment
In March 2005 unit 456 006 was hauled away to Wolverton where it has been studied for corrosion assessment, this caused some doubt to whether they would be refurbished. However, in a statement in April 2006 Southern said the class will receive a "refreshing", this meant they would not receive a refurbishment as large as the 455's, since the 456's are 10 years younger and already have the high backed seats. Also, on the newly-released sets, new CCTV cameras and flooring have been installed, this not mentioned on the original refurbishment plan.
All units have now been 'refreshed', and now the 456's have completed their development phase, and have been painted into Southern green colours. Unit 456 006 has being completed in a new, one-off promotional livery for rail safety on the Southern network. 456 013 will now have an experimental cab cooling system installed, and 456 022 will have some experimental air conditioning fitted, in an effort to make drivers' jobs easier.
Southern have now begun to remove the toilets from the trains, and replace them with seating, to provide more capacity. Depite this the Class 456 trains have lost 2 seats from each pair, due to a space being cleared for wheelchairs and pushchairs.
[edit] Criticism
The refurbishment of the sets wasn't as extensively rebuilt as with the British Rail Class 455 units. Currently, there are no electronic announcement boards on board, which means that when they when they work in multiple with the 455's, none of their Passenger Information System visual boards work, and the automatic announcements cannot be played.
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