Britain's FAILED Commuter Train Has FINALLY Entered Service!
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- Опубліковано 3 бер 2024
- SWR's brand new Class 701s have finally entered service on London Waterloo to Windsor services... so I went out to go try them! Were they worth all of the delays and issues it took to get them into service? Find out in this video!
Journey details:
Date of travel - January 2024
Operator - South Western Railway (SWR)
Origin - London Waterloo
Destination - Windsor & Eton Riverside
Price - £10.60 (Off peak day return including Railcard discount of 1/3)
Journey time - 54 minutes
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video!
Music from EpidemicSound and is used under license.
A massive thanks to Stephen Champion for filming the departure of the 701, do check out his channel here: / @champsracing
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#class701 #arterio #aventra #southwesternrailway #swr #london #waterloo #tripreport #vlog
Lovely trains, massive improvement with air conditioning, spacious cabin, usb power sockets, etc.
And cutting edge acceleration too.. fastest accelerating 100mph DC unit in the country
Not to mention toilets!
Don't forget the auto braking and automatic door opening (ABDO) making them one of the fastest train to come to a stop and open the doors..
@@dougle03 Last thing I heard ABDO was scrapped, the beacons were never installed and apparently it's not planned for them to be installed at all now. Unless you know something I don't, if you do I'd love to hear because it's such a shame to see a feature like that go to waste
@@OneTrackMinded That is possible, I left the project last year, at the time SWR were investigating the installation of the beliezes for the ABDO function, the train certainly has the capability and was tested on several occasions. I presume SWR don't have the money for the installation works, since all their spending (Every penny) has to be approved by the DfT...?
@@dougle03 From the people I’ve talked to, DFT don’t think it’s needed post COVID because the upgraded timetable which the function would have assisted with has also been removed from plans as a result of that. Interesting though that they were still discussing it a year ago, assumed it’s been off the cards for years now
One thing you missed is the bioreactor toilets; a first for UK rolling stock.
Except for the lack of air con, I'll actually miss the 455s. They are nicely set out and I've never known them to break down. Plus, the striking red colour seems much nicer than SWR's dull blue.
50 years later: grandpa they’re in service!
The addition of toilets I think is the best improvement.
You're still young mate! Railcard discount is so good!
I'm very impressed with the lighting - facing sideways to the windows; they keep the light level yet maintain comfort by casting minimal shadows
Funny isn't it. The British Rail built trains pre-privatisation, almost all came straight into service. Admittedly we had some problems with the Wessex Electrics (Pigs) 442s when first introduced, many were down to Dutch manufactured MCBs though.
There was a slight delay in delivery of the whole fleet and it wasn't unusual to have 8 or 12 coach TC stock with double headed Class 73 EDs hauling them. I worked them out of Bournemouth West depot.
Totally agree, straight into service once upon a time and teething troubles sorted out while as they occurred, which is the quickest way to solve things. These trains are already out of date before entering full service.
@@21michaelhill I believe cab dimensions were one of the problems that ASLEF raised. Crazy not involving the union and the drivers that have to use them in the first place. I had a look around the cab of an 800 in Bristol, it's absolutely massive, world of difference. Pity that passengers aren't consulted about the horrendous seating on new trains too.
It would have helped if the customer hadn't meddled with the design specification nearly 16 months after the design should have been frozen. And latterly if the unions had allowed their mainline drivers to start the training needed. For sure Bombardier.Alstom have had problems with delays, but those were started by poor design management and union problems. Look at how many are in storage, this tells you it's not all one sided...
@@21michaelhill Why are they "out of date"...? In what way?
@@dougle03 Well they clearly need a software update since they're still showing TFL rail. Bizarre that hasn't happened.
Even though they’ve gone to 2x2 seating, the seats don’t appear to be any wider than before and are still jammed up against one another. Train seats seem to be designed for people with no arms or shoulders, still!
The Overground still goes on about TFL Rail as well particularly at Wanstead Park
We have similar new trains here in Ireland with Irish Rail. We do have more leg room and we get a large table for each four seats. Prior to these trains,the rolling stock was pretty archaic,so these new trains are a welcome revelation.
The leg room in the 701 is limited because the customer configuration demanded more seats but could not allow longer trains. The longest Aventra unit is currently running on the Anglia route.
@@dougle03 Actually the class 345 is the longest aventra (though the SWR 701s have more carriages). I think the trains you're thinking of are Stadler FLIRTs.
@@MikeWillSee Sorry, not total length, I mean car length. I remember the works needed at Litchurch lane needed at the south end for the traverser to accommodate the longer class 720's, bins and much more had to be moved before one of them could be shuffled.
@@dougle03 according to Wikipedia the carriage length of the class 720 is the same as the class 345 and 730
Awsome video Midland.
Great video!
Great video, Queenstown Road is in London Borough of Wandsworth by the way 😊
Sorry. What a sad listless ticket checker. Rather than OPEN the barrier where you were at - he looks and goes back two barriers and opens that and makes you walk along to it. Mate if you hate your job resign.
I thought exactly the same thing. Looks like he just walked in off the street ! He sums up everything that is wrong with this country.
@@paullbennett2923And he looks like he was born in the UK. Meanwhile I got much better help from a ticket checker on the tube who even with his heavy Indian accent was very helpful in sorting out my phone not wanting to activate the fare gates.
@@mrvwbug4423Highly likely to be East European on minimum wage
Agency staff not even ticket trained
they are just contactors. SWR are slowly removing actual qualified gateline staff for the governments favoured shite contractors. he doesn't even work for the railway.
It is unforgivable that, in 2024, the trains don’t have level boarding. Blatant disregard for the needs of wheelchair passengers. I’m amazed they have been allowed to get away with this.
not really because you have station staff and guards to assist.
@@thomas8692yeah but that’s a lot longer, and in this economy another person you have to pay
Stadler have the right idea with their recent trains.
Lots of trains in Europe where platforms are lower have two section designs where the doors are at platform level and there's a step up where the bogies are. In the UK it should be easier as our platforms are almost as high as the bogies, but it seems that manufacturers/rail companies don't want to bother here.
They've been test running these thru Bournemouth and Poole literally for years, I'm surprised that they're not all worn out already!
Bro just roasted the arteries to artifacts 😂
I think he said heart attacks, but still a good roast
Could do with those trains on the Waterloo to Reading line. SWR are currently running aging class 455s, originally brought into service in the mid 1980s to replace the old slam door stock. It's pathetic; the journey from Reading to Waterloo now takes longer than it did forty years ago, and there are no toilets. What on earth is going on with SWR?
we have one here in sydney that was built in korea it arrived here 5 years ago (a long distance double deck commuter train) and we are STILL waiting for it to go into service they still havent finished the modifications that were going to be done to it ( we had a change of government since then hence the modificiation changes)
For a capacity perspective, the 701 fleet in number of coaches equals the 455, 456, 458, and 707 fleets together, with an extra unit added on. I’ve seen some comments elsewhere about capacity reduction with getting rid of too many trains, but that really won’t be the case, even if they don’t keep the 458 fleet.
Being a windsor/slough local, always use the slough to Paddington (and beyond) rather than Windsor to Waterloo service, I may check out these new trains sometime.
IMHO a lot of others do just that......
I really don't understand the need to use a scrolling front destination when it fits without a problem.
Hello there. Great video to update rail fans of the new trains. I look forward to trying them soon. Could you or anyone else tell me what app you use for the train speed and other data please? It looks a pretty good app. Many thanks.
Hi, the link to Stephen Champion's UA-cam Channel shows 404 not found. It doesn't seem to be the right address!
Not experienced one yet. They look decent.
Three months later in May and I STILL haven't seen one in service!
for some reason i see them quite frequently at bounremouth in the mornings
Brilliant video thanks.
At 2:15 I always seem to have my ticket bought with railcard deliberately blocked, because, you know.
SWR.
The poor staff say it's deliberate and means they must manually see through people who have completely correct tickets.
Massive queues to get out of the platforms at half term.
Classic SWR Customer Service.
The barriers can be set up to reject railcard tickets so they have to be checked.
Still less annoying than the tube where if you're traveling with someone else each of you has to tap through with your own phone or card. At least with tickets on national rail, when my wife and I were traveling together I could just pull up the tickets on my phone and scan us both through the fare gates when the stations had them.
They are agency staff not SWR staff
Twice I have got off the train with an all-day ticket and returned to the station to find all the alarms going off. I am then accosted by SWR staff who accuse me of being passed someone else's ticket or some other 'crime' and when I point out I have an all-day ticket I was told I don't know what it's like running a station. Clearly the programming of the system has been directed by policy!
they are running portsmuth / waterloo as well .. well one of them is. The new Flirts are all level boarding...
It will always be the North London line to me
They aren't exactly rushing them into service. They have been in service for two months now and I still havent seen one in use.
I'm going to London on Thursday (Woking derailment permitting!), so I'll look out for these. Meanwhile I shall be on one the Exeter service trains which are ??? years old!
Introduced 1993. Always excellently maintained, and refurbished to high standards by SWT
NSW in Australia has the same problems - the hard right "Liberals" ordered over-width Hyundai trains form Korea rather than build them here, as Labor in other states did. They also wanted driver-only operation, despite many platforms being curved, and many being sloped. After years they are STILL not in service. They are also full of defects. Meanwhile for long distance, despite huge tears (oops, "cracks") in the trams, they are still ordering Cracked and Faulty hybrids.
Hard right liberal? 😆😆😆
When the London Overground lines get renamed I'm going to still go on them but now say "Journey on the North/East/South/West/Watford DC/Lea Valley London Overground Lines".
Nice, better than norther rail pacers
Lack of level boarding....step change....I see what you did there. 😂. I'm not sure on the reason for lack of level boarding, but I suspect there are two causes: 1) Varying platform heights, 2) Bombardier/Alsthom not wanting to make the Aventra series at the correct height for the current UK standard platform height. This is also an issue with the class 345s. They had to make the lizzy line core stations at the wrong platform height in order to match the 345s, hence why when you go out of the core, they don't have level boarding, but they do at the newly built stations.
Mostly number 1 in this case. They vary massively on all the lines these trains are going to operate on, there is no proper standard. Even those FLIRT trains which are known for their level boarding require platforms to be at a relative standard otherwise the ramp they deploy just becomes a step
@@OneTrackMinded I did the route clearance for the 701, we had to modify 4 platforms to fit the 701 through, always footsteps.
To be fair the UK doesn't really follow any consistent platform height standard, then you also get banked tracks in stations causing the train to be tilted when stopped at the platform. One of the few things the US does better in terms of railways, the US has only 2 platform height standards. 51 inches for level boarding trains everywhere in the US and 8 inches for low floor boarding (to clear freight trains) everywhere in the US. The only two places I saw consistent level boarding in the UK when I was there a couple weeks ago were on the tube and at Heathrow, but then the Heathrow express trains are step boarding at the Paddington end. Out in provincial UK, platforms ranged anywhere from a small step in major stations like Crewe and Shrewsbury, to huge steps in rural stations in Wales.
@@mrvwbug4423there is a platform height standard of 915mm (+-15mm) which is essentially 3ft (the previous standard)
Problem is that we have loads of platforms that predate this standard
So the platforms in East Anglia have a standard height but those in the SWT region don't?@@OneTrackMinded
The toilets are likely clean due to barely anyone using them. If lack of toilets on old stock really had been a problem, passengers would have noticed the smell and the sticky floors.....
I watched a fellow desperate for the loo force the doors open while the train was in motion and jump out. Some of the journeys on these into London could be over an hour!
@@poppyland74 A single fellow? Not a great sample size.
701s what an upgrade over what they replaced they are much better than the 455s and 707s and even the 458s and the 458s are pretty good trains but man the 701s are an upgrade
Ah the good old ironing board seats that we never wanted or asked for. That being said I personally find them more comfortable that the seats found on the class 800 intercity trains operated by LNER, GWR and Transpennine
Saying we didn’t want them or ask for them is strange. You can say you don’t like them, but you don’t get to decide what train companies want.
@@HomemadeBrownies1 ever heard of sarcasm?
@@gftyhify nah mate, I have no idea what sarcasm is
Supposedly the Lumo IETs and the TfW class 197s have a better version of the seat on the 800s (which is probably the only good thing the class 197 crapbucket has going for it). Though at least from what I've personally experienced, the Avanti 390s or the MK4 coaches that TfW operate are by far the most comfortable
Apparently GWR seats are "best of the best of the best"
Not only seats are hard, but back angle is so straight, You fell like on camping chair ;)
Perfect for 4+ hours journey from Paddington to Cornwall :D
your ticket wasn’t an issue. It was a discounted ticket which this gateline has been set to always reject for manual inspection, normally a child ticket or restricted issue discounts such as staff travel. you can tell by the 8 orange lights that show above the arrow. for example at my station, we regularly have people travelling on child tickets that shouldn’t either by mistake or purposely and our gates are set to accept them, but when i’m on i change it to reject them all which is why some stations they work at and some they don’t :)
what is wrong with there being a card map…?? if anything, it’s better, those screens are susceptible to failure.
The quality of your videos has certainly grown since 2022 (when I started watching). Keept it up 👍🏾
I feel like much of the improvemnts seen on the 701s, such as the addition of better padded seats and toilets, could have been applied to the 707s instead of creating an entirely new fleet to replace them and others. Not to mention, the 707 still manages to accelerate sligthly faster.
it doesn't, the 701 is the second fastest accelerating DC train in the country behind the 777 and the fastest accelerating 100mph DC train
the figures on wikipedia for the 707 and 700 are wrong as they are on AC and came from the siemens specification document regarding AC acceleration.
based on real world testing using accelerometers and comparing them all, the 701 comes out on top of the desiro cities (on DC of course), and all the other DC based trains in London. it's quite amazing really
@@OneTrackMinded fair enough, but I still believe they weren't worth the hassle. The commuters have already suffered. The only thing being transported now is their corpses.
@@spottymaxy1628 lmao the delay is really bad (4 years now I think?) but 701s bring other benefits which could have never been retrofitted on the 707s, like the majority being full 10 car walkthrough rather than two coupled up units. I do get your point tho, at least the 707s have a new home at southeastern, and once the 701s are all in service they will provide a guaranteed quality on all services as they're replacing all of the suburban fleet, rather than the chance you might be on a 455 with no ac because there were only ever 30 or so 707s
oh and also the 707s were at max axle weight hence why there wasn't a toilet
Siemens didn't put in a compliant bid for the fleet, that's why they lost out to Bombardier. They refused to take on the full specification requirements and thus their bid was marked down accordingly. Equally, the 707's are still not fully route gauge cleared, unlike the 701's that were clear 3 years ago. The Aventra is a very gauge friendly train.
Oh no not the ironing boards...
Nice. Will they be in service on the Shepperton line?
Eventually yes.
In about a hundred years, I suspect.
I saw a 701 in service down Portsmouth way
c'mon city!
just testing i belive. They wont run further south than guildford.
Sickest burn in br history 2:41
Arterio sounds like a spell from Harry Potter. One that messes with its victims bloodclot, if I were to guess.
Both the poor legroom (7:00) and the poor window/seat alignment is the result of trying to cram too many seats into the space to take in more (revenue-providing) passengers. Shortsighted pinch-penny planning.
years ahead of the Scottish ferries!
Quite a delay, but nothing to compare with SWT’s need to reintroduce slam-door trains after a simiiar delay a good few years ago.
Pleasw do a review on the Renfe Alvia s730 from Madrid to Badajoz.
Isn’t that 334s + Talgo?
@@HSTHoward no. It is an Alvia S730 Talgo 250 dual. You can search it
When I went on it for a ride to Windsor & Eton Riverside my guard kept interupting Celia Drummond's announcements, I felt like saying "Shut The F**k Up and Stop interupting Celia Drummond'" I didn't like the short tables and offset table & seats in the corner, good trains overall.
Nice video, but the 701s are not really very good. Better than the 455s that SWR has now put on the Reading line but nowhere near as good as a 458 Juniper. Are the 701s still just doing the two return trips per day? Why not more by now???
From what I remember, the class 455's were in service quite soon after delivery but this doesn't seem to happen now as someone else has commented. I know drivers have to be trained but with all these 701's sitting in sidings could not this have been started earlier. All new trains (and cars and planes) have teething problems but still enter service and sort out as they go.
They put 455s on the Reading Line??? I thought that was served by 450s when they couldn't get enough 458s for it.
@@21michaelhill The Unions caused huge delays (2 years) to mainline driver training...
Yeah the 455s are on the Reading line. There are more of them running along there atm @@randomguy-tg7ok
Thank fuck a toilet i have been drunk on this train journey multiple times. Finally a bog.
So no level boarding and no guard to put down a ramp? How is that working at unmanned stations?
all 701s require a guard to opperate. DOO was never agreed for SWR :)
@@thomas8692 ah cheers!
Aventra's are taking over
Jam
I'm really impressed - for the most part. The one "issue" that I have is the doors. I understand that trains, by law, must have their doors painted in a contrasting colour to the rest of the train. However, some of the coaches are grey with dark blue doors and some are the other way around. Part of me wonders if this might cause some confusion.
i wonder if it will run from waterloo to portmouth harbour that would be good to try out
probably not. thats class 450 and 444 territory
they wont run south of guildford
I think we need a law banning the purchase of any new trains that are not level boarding compliant. South West London is going to be blighted by the Class 701 trains for decades now. That means an entire generation of wheelchair users and people who have problems getting on and off trains are going to struggle to get around. I know that people used to dismiss accessibility needs in the past, but we are supposed to be moving towards a more enlightened Britain.
If SWR was in public hands and the train project was run by a nice person, like David Powell, we could have been seeing the same sort of accessibility improvements that Merseyrail has been getting. The people of South West London and Surrey have been robbed of this opportunity.
We can not afford to have the same sort of nonsense happen in other UK regions. The public deserve better. We must have the small amount of extra investment needed to make our rail network and trains work for all passengers.
How can it be a 'failed train' if it's only just entering service? Ridicous headline.
It's a video title on UA-cam about something in Britain, so apparently it has to be hyperbolically negative.
clickbait
Man's got a point 👀
Nice trains👍but as for the "Mildmay Line" and the new names for the Overground, they're definitely not washing with me👎. It will always be the 'North London link' to me, just like the "Goblin line" for those in that part of town.
The Mildmay Line just doesn't cut it. We all know it as The North London Line and I can't imagine that changing any time soon.
I suspect this was not a "service" train, but the untimetabled test trains. That would explain the lack of passengers as not many knew they were running and the state of the toliets one train a day and not always the dsame stock wpuuld explain that.. They ran in service for one week!!!
Could anyone please share a link for the speedometer app? Thanks
there's a bunch of em on the google play store. uninstall when you're done as they all are basically spyware.
UA-cam doesn’t like links they get removed.
do a hull trains review
Would you compare these with 707s?
these are way better than the 707s
call them heart attacks# haha
Seats are bad. Those tables don't move and people get stuck under them.
Brilliant video! Don’t forget to subscribe everyone!
yayyyyyyyyyyy
The are not as comfortable as the SUB and EPB stock.
They've been working perfectly OK with other operators for years. If anything is the failure, it's SW Railway's management
4 years long time wait class 701
South Worstern Railway are a complete and utter shambles. The 455's are frequently late, overcrowded, break down all the time, are filthy and make for a thoroughly miserable experience. If any SWR train runs on time it is worthy of celebration.
Where I live (Epsom) we have no introduction date for these new trains so have to put up with the 455's providing just 24 carriages per hour peak (3 8-car trains max, mostly just 2 8-car trains) when we used to have 54 carriages per hour peak (4 10-car trains and 2 8-car trains) pre-pandemic.
Even with the vastly reduced service, SWR frequently fail to run and as for the timetable, well that is more of a rough guide.
The introduction of the new stock has been as shambolic as everything else SWR do.
Thank you for pointing out how out of date the PIDs are, also the alignment of text on them is awful.
Finally, a toilet xD
Those seats looked really similar to the Thameslink 700s and I immediately got a sinking feeling. Glad to hear they're much better padded.
Also the union disputes about guards seems really silly when you consider that the Tube and many other mainline rail services (including Thameslink) run without guards just fine and without safety issues.
tube and themslink (forever i think) has been driver only for years and years.
SWR lines need to be modified and then approved for use by DOO trains. Like the west coast mainline... where its a network rail requirement to have a guard...
Plus we shouldn't be removing staffing from the railway at at time where more passengers require assistance (wheelchairs, mental illnesses) and where crime is on the rise......
@@thomas8692Sure, but those duties can be managed by staff at stations, in fact it's probably easier for someone on the platform to get the ramp out for a wheelchair user. And as mentioned, DOO is already commonplace elsewhere and the new trains already have all the cameras in place for the driver to monitor the platform, so I don't see what the issue is.
Train designers have abandoned interior and exterior aesthetics for ugliness. As long as they get the impatient passengers from A to B as fast and efficiently as possible, nothing else matters.
Pretty poor design flaws I think. Should be doing better than this in this age.
did SWR ask us if we wanted these trains? they really suck
The reason why these Trains haven't entered service until now is because they are poorly designed, Cheaply Built, The Train Strikes and the Government interfering with the Project.
These Trains will possibly Only last 10 Years and these won't be as good as it's predecessor's.
More Train operators are buying the same Horrid Cheap Plastic Trains.
Okay you distracted my listening to My Chemical Romance, I expect a good video
£10.60 for a return off peak trip of 70km? No, that's still too expensive.
It really is time to get U.K. train fares down to entice people out of their cars and off clogged roads. Enough of this economic-rationalist nonsense of trains having to pay their own way via recouped fares (i.e. TfL). It completely ignores the socioeconomic and environmental advantages that public transport provides.
Incidentally, are these trains one class or two class?
TfL is the reason everyone else has higher fares because they don’t know how to manage their own budgets and everyone else takes up their infrastructure costs and that’s not fair
It's not a British train it's French.
French-owned (and Canadian before that) but it's 100% designed for the UK. You won't find anything like it in Paris, let alone Toronto.
@@davidaarthur indeed, but the country that invented trains doesn't make them anymore.
The making (manufacturing) happens here, it's just done by foreign owned companies to foreign designs, much like "British" cars.
@epender Some trains are made here, and others are imported but no British train companies. At least some of the cars made here are British brands but foreign owned.
Overground line euston watford terminal to terminal. So its the watford line right? No it is named after a minor halt at wembley. But nothing to do with the station. So its the wembley stadium line? Nope. Its named after the local football or similar team? Nope. So what is it named after. Something that has no relevance to the liine the area or anything local.
3:02 - Better not tell Trump supporters there's a location near London called "Woking"!