Southeastern has announced that they are planning to use five-car Class 707 trains in the future.
30 Five Car units will transfer over to Southeastern when they are made redundant by South Western Railway.
Class 707s will be replaced by 90 Class 701 Aventra trains, which are on order from Bombardier for South Western Railway, which will be used on Metro services from London Waterloo.
The Class 707s are part of the Direct Award Contract that was announced recently (more information on that by clicking here)
As these new trains will replace Class 707 trains, it is not yet known when any Class 707s will move over to Southeastern.
What did the officials say?
A Southeastern spokesman said:
“We are in the early stages of planning for additional capacity for the Southeastern network- this is part of the Direct Award Contract announced this week with the Department for Transport.
“We are dependent on the availability of existing rolling stock, and we are working with the industry on a plan to transfer 30 x 5 car Class 707 units which are currently in service on the South Western Railway network – only when they become available.”
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They won’t paint it they will just wrap it
“Musical trains!”-making better use of available rolling stock always good news, the downside is the cost of driver training when any ‘new’ unit is cascaded, as well as cover for those training. GA will doubtless experience driver shortages when the 720 programme starts in earnest. The vivid SWR livery will need a lot of paint to assume Southeastern uniform!
376 and 707 are high capacity trains, so they’ll most likely be kept west of dartford. Plus they don’t have toilets!! It’s the networkers with a refurb thatd be going longer – in the past I’ve been on a 465/9 that was from Dover!
And what about the Class 458/5s. Will the former SWR Class 458s might be cascaded to Southern and to replace the Class 455 on the suburban routes and Class 313 on the East Coastway and West Coastway routes. Or will the Class 458s could be scrapped.
I guess that Southeastern wants the Class 707s so it can work on the Dartford (via Woolwich Arsenal/Sidcup/Falconwood), Hayes via Ladywell and other suburban services.
And possibly Southeastern might retain the Class 376s and to use them on the North Kent services (including Gravesend, Rochester, Gillingham, Strood, Sittingbourne and Faversham).
With the Class 707s cascaded to Southeastern from South Western Railway. Is Southeastern keeping the Class 376 or will the Class 376 might be cascaded to Southern to replace the Class 455 used on the suburban services in South London.
No, this transfer is just to increase capacity. Southern’s 455s are apparently really cheap to run so they want to keep them for as long as they can. The move will also free up networkers running the short, slow routes to go and run longer services