The one-hundredth Class 450 “Desiro” train to be repainted has been unveiled at South Western Railway's Bournemouth Traincare Depot.
Appropriately, number 450100 was the unit chosen for the occasion, and to celebrate representatives from South Western Railway, Siemens Mobility, and Angel Trains joined members of the team that repainted the train as it was displayed in its shiny new livery.
The repainting programme has been a collaboration between South Western Railway, Siemens Mobility, which built the train and is responsible for its technical maintenance, and Angel Trains, which lease the trains to South Western Railway.
South West Trains, South Western Railway's predecessor, introduced the Desiros into service in 2004. In 2017. South Western Railway won the franchise and announced that the trains would be repainted in the railway's corporate colours. Repainting of the first unit was completed in November 2019 and, like the previous 99 units, all have been repainted by the train painting team at Bournemouth Depot.
Each four-car unit takes requires 210 litres of paint and 7,500 metres of masking tape, and takes seven days to paint. Once the repainting is completed, before the train is returned to service, it undergoes a deep clean. So far 210,000 litres of paint have been used repainting the trains, which equates to painting nine kilometres of train or 120 jumbo jets. Enough masking tape has been used to stretch twice from London to Weymouth and back.
SWR's Deputy Engineering Director, James Wale, said;
“It's great to see the 100th Desiro unit repainted and ready to go back into service, where our customers will soon be able to enjoy the benefits of its repainting and cleaning.
“It has shown how much we can achieve when we work collaboratively, and I'd like to thank our partners Siemens Mobility and Angel Trains for their cooperation and enthusiasm as well as all of the train painters at Bournemouth for their hard work”.
Matt Colclough, Customer Services Operations Director for Siemens Mobility Limited, said;“ This is a great example of collaboration and team work between SWR, Angel Trains, Siemens Mobility and industry. The Desiro fleet of 172 trains has travelled over 386 million miles, the same as 4 return trips to Mars and have carried over 173million passengers, so it is fantastic to see them looking as good as new, ready for serving customers from the south coast to London. What a great effort by all the teams involved from SWR, Siemens Mobility and Angel on the repaint project and keeping these trains in service day in and day out.”
David Jordon, COO of Angel Trains, said
“We are excited for our 100th Desiro unit to return to service following its repainting in Bournemouth last week. It is a pleasure to work alongside South Western Railways and Siemens Mobility, and to celebrate this milestone together.”
What about the Class 701 Arterios that South Western Railway have promised its passengers that these new trains will enter service late summer. Looks like we won’t be seeing these new 10-Car trains in service until next year.
I think the maths is defective: if each train takes 210 litres of paint, and 100 have been completed, that’s 21,000 litres, not 210,000. And I’m tempted to wonder how you can use 7.5km of masking tape on a unit that’s less than 100 metres long.