Farewell to the 455s

Through Mitcham Eastfields on a Horsham train, 10 August 2011

This coming Saturday, 14th May, sees the withdrawal from the suburban routes of the South Central Division — the tangle of railways running out of Victoria and London Bridge into south London — of the class 455 electric multiple units that have held sway in these parts for nearly forty years.  Their siblings on the South Western lines out of Waterloo will apparently follow in the next few months.

Basking in the sun at Victoria, 28 August 2013

Few ordinary passengers are likely to mourn them.  They are not glamorous, nor were they built to be, though I think better care could still have been taken of their interiors in recent years.  They were designed for mass short-distance transport, to lug commuters around the Hills and Commons of the southern boroughs; to venture to climes no more exotic than Crystal Palace, Epsom Downs, Caterham or Dorking.  I doubt they have averaged more than around twenty miles per hour over the course of their working lives.  But they have worked solidly, clocking up thousands upon thousands of rush-hours since the early 1980s.

Rumbling across the South Circular overbridge into Tulse Hill, bound for the Wimbledon loop, 11 April 2019

I am among those who will miss them.  It was against the backdrop of these faithful workhorses, plying their way up to London or down to Dorking, their acceleration distantly, enticingly audible over the suburban rooftops, that my rail enthusiasm was first contracted and swiftly found to be incurable.  The aforementioned South Western sister-class ran right past my grandmother’s garden, and I used a 455 as my subject for the centre-piece of a school art project (because I knew I could draw trains and buildings, but not people!).  More recently — until the pandemic in fact — my train into work was reliably formed by one of these units.

A Victoria-bound semi-fast accelerating through Mitcham Eastfields, 4 January 2011

Like the slightly younger 319s (themselves a familiar sight around South London until a few years ago) and their cousins the recently-scrapped two-car 456s, the 455s were built at York by British Rail Engineering Limited, as lettering on the step-plates proudly declared.  However, in contrast to the 319s — which were more souped-up trains, designed for Luton and Gatwick routes, for people with flights to catch, always seeming cramped by the chords and spurs of suburban south London, itching for the open stretches of the Brighton or Midland main lines — the 455s seemed gentler and more sedate, more suited to the way we do things here, south of the river, in the land of the electrified third rail.  To a 455, with its seldom-attained top speed of 75 mph, it did not seem to matter if we got to Ewell East now or some time next week.  They trundled their way around, taking their time about everything.  No point rushing this curve or that junction; there’ll only be something else to brake for around the next bend.  

Through the window onto dawn-lit commuterland, 1 October 2018

Adding to the dreamy aura of these trains were the various reassuring sounds they made: the chirruping of the brakes and the soft sigh on their release, the warble-piping of the original door alarms, the clunk of the camshaft on departure, and the leisurely thrumming of the brake compressors, this last being the sound I will miss the most.  Then there were the motors, matching the register of a cello, rising from a growl from a standstill to the very top of the tenor range if given the chance to stretch their legs.  The only alarming sound was the occasional crunch of electricity arcing from the third rail. 

Arriving at Streatham Hill on the 1617 to London Bridge, the once-daily parliamentary service via the Leigham Spur and Tulse Hill, 25 April 2019

The motors themselves are worth remarking on, for they are actually recycled.  Incredible as it may sound, they are over eighty years old, and more than twice the age the trains they have been powering.  The early Eighties, when these units were built, were not an easy time for British Rail, which, struggling under persistent inadequacies in government subsidy, had constantly to make do and mend with their scarce resources.  Their solution in this case was to fit the new trains with not only second- but third-hand motors built originally by the Southern Railway for its electric units in the 1930s.  Though now into their ninth decade and effectively dating from the electrification itself, the motors still seem perfectly sound to my ear.  Whatever the reason is for the withdrawal of these trains, I doubt it has anything to do with the traction equipment.

A down train draws into Wandsworth Common, 9 December 2018

I am not the only one sad to see them go.  ‘South London is [going to] feel weird without them,’ said one contributor to the ever-perusable Rail Forums.  Another chap, a driver who also films the modern railway scene and has a presence on YouTube, told me in an exchange in the comments, ‘These were the trains I grew up on, the trains that took me on all sorts of adventures and when I passed out [i.e. qualified] as a driver became my core traction.’

Epsom train rounding the curve south of Mitcham Junction, 4 February 2022

There is always a pang to see the clearing out of the furniture of our beginnings, however ordinary these things may be.  Perhaps, in fact, the more ordinary and the more constant they have seemed, the sharper the pang.  Bit by bit, the railscape of my childhood is disappearing (the analogue signals, the bell at Eastfields level crossing, the late Phil Sayer’s voice over the speakers…), and by the end of this weekend another major part of it will have crumbled completely away.  I will certainly miss the familiar presence of these old units, with the many associations they hold for me.

A final farewell, Mitcham Common, 4 February 2022

But let us end with the nearest a 455 ever came to attaining railway glory.  Under the pre-2018 timetable, one single passenger service each weekday was booked to run non-stop down the fourteen-mile line from Dorking to Horsham, and this was generally allocated to a 455 unit.  So, just before that timetable was abolished, I took one of the last opportunities to experience this run, and filmed the journey from just beyond Betchworth Tunnel to just short of Horsham.  As I have said, 455s hardly ever had the chance of a clear non-stop flat-out run like this, and certainly in their latter years Horsham was the furthest south they ever ventured in regular service.  So it was a rare treat to see this humble suburban unit reliving the glory days of the old Bognor expresses, accelerating to the full line speed of 75 mph along probably my favourite stretch of railway in south-east England.  (We really begin to pick up speed after Holmwood, five minutes in, and after Ockley, at six minutes, there is the added bonus of some jointed track, which we hammer over at full tilt.)  The date was the 14th May, 2018 — four years to the day, as it turns out, before the final withdrawal of the class.

Ten years of Mitcham Eastfields station

Mitcham Eastfields station, with London’s skyline in the distance, 6 January 2015.

It is strange that a town once skirted by the world’s first public railway line should have emerged from the industrial age rather poorly served by rail, but this was the misfortune of Mitcham in South London.  The opening of the Surrey Iron Railway in 1803 had augured well for its transport prospects, but the iron was to give way to irony: Mitcham largely missed out on the rest of the railway boom, and was to end up oddly cut off from the network for a century and a half — until, that is, the opening of Mitcham Eastfields station, ten years ago today.

It had not been total isolation: there was Mitcham station itself, some distance from the centre of town on the Wimbledon-West Croydon line, a route running east to west mostly along the old track-bed of the Surrey Iron Railway.  But the passenger service was always sporadic, and a change was always required for London and the south.  (Frequencies on the route were drastically increased by conversion to tram operation in the year 2000, but a change is still required.)

Derived from material © OpenStreetMap contributors.

When, in 1868, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway opened its new route from London Bridge to Sutton, its route skimmed the eastern edge of what was then still Mitcham village, but no station was provided.  Instead, to the south, Mitcham Junction station was built where it met the existing Wimbledon-Croydon railway.  Unusually, the new main line (which for many years really was a main line, carrying South Coast expresses — another story!) deferred to the less important branch line, simply because the latter had been there first.  The new line curved sharply to meet the east-west alignment of the old, and then, immediately beyond the station, veered southwards again.  Mitcham Junction is even further from town than the first Mitcham station, but this was to remain the total railway provision for the next 140 years, the only alternative being Tooting, lying just as far to the north.  So, all in all, it may justly be said that Mitcham lost out in the great railway lottery of south London.

2–8 Tamworth Lane (now demolished) and Eastfields level crossing in 1974.  Photographer: Eric N. Montague. 
© Merton Historical Society, reproduced by their kind permission.

According to the current local Member of Parliament, Siobhain McDonagh, improvements to this situation was first considered properly in the 1930s.  A new station at the Eastfields Road level crossing was proposed: Avenues and Closes and Gardens galore of suburban housing were then being constructed in the area, setting the seal on Mitcham’s transformation from a village into a suburb, and promising a lucrative commuter market.  Still, fine words butter no parsnips, and no progress was made.  After the war, the population increased steadily, and has risen particularly rapidly since the millennium, so as the years went on the question was pressing harder and harder.  All day the trains that could be ours were rushing through before our eyes, and all the while, plain to see on each side of the level crossing, were broad, level, unbuilt-on verges, which just the right width for a platform…

Under construction, April 2008

Then, all of a sudden, in summer 2007, it was action stations.  Network Rail (the body in charge of national railway infrastructure) declared itself able and willing to build the new station, and Merton Council granted the scheme planning permission.  Siobhain McDonagh MP also deserves credit for her part in the long campaign.  Once these decisions were made, Mitcham Eastfields was built and opened within a year.  One reason for this quick work was the method of construction: the station building is ‘modular’, prefabricated in sections elsewhere, brought on site by lorry and assembled in situ.  Another quirk of the design is that the platforms are staggered on either side of the level crossing, so that in each direction trains cross the road before stopping at the station; this allows the barriers to be lifted behind them and keeps the road traffic moving. 

All in all, the total cost of six million pounds does not really sound too much for the first new station to be built in south London since the war.  Mitcham’s third and most convenient station was opened at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on June 2, 2008, ten years ago today, and the first train called ten minutes later.  Incidentally, this tenth anniversary resonates with the 150th anniversary of the line on which it stands (opened 1st October 1868, the same date as St Pancras station).  This is a good year for railway anniversaries!.

(Filmed by YouTube user ‘mm267a’)

The councillors from the Labour Party were very quick off the mark…  They beat most people to it and were at the station in time to meet the first train.  For latecomers there were free bags handed out, with flasks and plates emblazoned with the slogan ‘Mitcham Eastfields: Get on board and GO!’ which I presume didn’t mean ‘permanently’!

Forty minutes old on opening day, 2nd June 2008

Well, for ten years we have been coming as well as going, and have had the benefit of being able to reach Clapham Junction in twelve minutes, London Victoria in twenty and London Blackfriars in just under half an hour.  Other exciting (or at least useful) destinations include Sutton, Epsom and St. Pancras International, as well as London Bridge in the rush hour.  Many local people now depend on the station and annual passenger numbers are around a million and a half.  Its structure may be rather unassuming, but perhaps that rather suits this part of London that doesn’t give itself airs, and it also shows particularly well what difference a railway station, such a simple thing, can make to a place.   It is good to have a station we can call our own.

The station opened and our bypassed town

was open too.  Our town became a place,

and they belonged to us, the trains that race

and rattle south or north, that scurry down

to Surrey and to Sussex, chalk and clay

and mellow valleys, or that sprint across

to London’s alternating grime and gloss.

Change once for France and Belgium, some trains say;

Change once to reach the South Coast and the sea;

yet know the line can always bring you back

to this familiar platformed stretch of track,

which joins us to all places.  We are free

to flee, return or stay, since now we share

the thrill of rails that lead to anywhere.

(composed December, 2009)

Southward panorama: Rialto Road to the right and the Laburnum Road flats in the background. (2 March 2015)