Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) is celebrating the completion at Southern’s Selhurst depot in South London of a £100m reliability and onboard upgrade of its largest train fleet.

Taking five years, 304 ‘Electrostar’ trains consisting of 1,222 carriages operated by Southern, Gatwick Express, Great Northern, and Southeastern were upgraded by ‘Project Aurora’, which was funded by rolling stock company Porterbrook.

Improvements include plug and USB sockets, information screens, LED lighting, improved WiFi, and a new digital “backbone” to help speed up repairs.

The final train to be upgraded was unit No. 387305, which is due back into service this weekend.

At the project’s peak, two trains were upgraded each week.

In total, 304 trains required:

• 280 km of wiring,
• 39,000 LED lighting tubes.
• 36,000 power and twin USB sockets.
• 2.8 million fixings and fastenings.

Each seat now has power and dual USB sockets, and at the end of each carriage are new digital screens.

Each train’s operational systems can now be monitored through on-board data recorders and updates to the Train Data Network, so that engineers can diagnose faults before the trains arrive at their destinations.

The trains have also been fitted with forward-facing and track debris CCTV that remotely live streams and downloads images to aid incident analysis and help reduce future delays.

As well as the Electrostar trains, Southeastern has been upgrading its Class 376 units and Class 395 ‘Javelins’.

“The success of this modernisation scheme has resulted in wide-ranging benefits to passengers on some of the country’s busiest routes, and I’d like to thank everyone whose dedication contributed to this. A project of this scale to be completed in-house by Southern engineers is a really impressive feat and has been key to the speed we’ve managed to get upgraded trains out and serving customers again. I hope passengers are feeling the benefit of these improvements as they use our trains to visit friends and family and explore some of the great destinations our railway has to offer.”

Steve Lammin, GTR’s Engineering Director