Britain's FAILED Commuter Train Has FINALLY Entered Service! 

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

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.

I'm very impressed with the lighting - facing sideways to the windows; they keep the light level yet maintain comfort by casting minimal shadows

50 years later: grandpa they’re in service!

The addition of toilets I think is the best improvement.

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.

You're still young mate! Railcard discount is so good!

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.

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!

Awsome video Midland.

They've been test running these thru Bournemouth and Poole literally for years, I'm surprised that they're not all worn out already!

Great video!

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.

Great video, Queenstown Road is in London Borough of Wandsworth by the way 😊

Bro just roasted the arteries to artifacts 😂

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.

Hi, the link to Stephen Champion's RU-vid Channel shows 404 not found. It doesn't seem to be the right address!

3:16 Make trains with level boarding in mind CHALLENGE IMPOSSIBLE!!!

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.

Three months later in May and I STILL haven't seen one in service!

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)

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?

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

I really don't understand the need to use a scrolling front destination when it fits without a problem.

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.

for some reason i see them quite frequently at bounremouth in the mornings

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.

Not experienced one yet. They look decent.

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.....

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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".

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 :)

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

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.

Nice, better than norther rail pacers

Arterio sounds like a spell from Harry Potter. One that messes with its victims bloodclot, if I were to guess.

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.

Could anyone please share a link for the speedometer app? Thanks

Sickest burn in br history 2:41

Oh no not the ironing boards...

Thank fuck a toilet i have been drunk on this train journey multiple times. Finally a bog.

I saw a 701 in service down Portsmouth way

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.

years ahead of the Scottish ferries!

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.

what is wrong with there being a card map…?? if anything, it’s better, those screens are susceptible to failure.

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 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.

Nice. Will they be in service on the Shepperton line?

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.

How can it be a 'failed train' if it's only just entering service? Ridicous headline.

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???

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!!!

Jam

Pleasw do a review on the Renfe Alvia s730 from Madrid to Badajoz.

They've been working perfectly OK with other operators for years. If anything is the failure, it's SW Railway's management

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.

So no level boarding and no guard to put down a ramp? How is that working at unmanned stations?

do a hull trains review

Aventra's are taking over

Seats are bad. Those tables don't move and people get stuck under them.

i wonder if it will run from waterloo to portmouth harbour that would be good to try out

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.

Brilliant video! Don’t forget to subscribe everyone!

yayyyyyyyyyyy

Thank you for pointing out how out of date the PIDs are, also the alignment of text on them is awful.

The are not as comfortable as the SUB and EPB stock.

call them heart attacks# haha

4 years long time wait class 701

Would you compare these with 707s?

Finally, a toilet xD

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.

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.

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?

It's not a British train it's French.

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"!