SWR’s brand new Class 701s have finally entered service on London Waterloo to Windsor services… so I went out to go try them! Were they worth all of the delays and issues it took to get them into service? Find out in this video!
Journey details:
Date of travel – January 2024
Operator – South Western Railway (SWR)
Origin – London Waterloo
Destination – Windsor & Eton Riverside
Price – £10.60 (Off peak day return including Railcard discount of 1/3)
Journey time – 54 minutes
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video!
Music from EpidemicSound and is used under license.
A massive thanks to Stephen Champion for filming the departure of the 701, do check out his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@ChampsRacing
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#class701 #arterio #aventra #southwesternrailway #swr #london #waterloo #tripreport #vlog
29 Comments
call them heart attacks# haha
It's not a British train it's French.
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.
Arterio sounds like a spell from Harry Potter. One that messes with its victims bloodclot, if I were to guess.
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.
I really don't understand the need to use a scrolling front destination when it fits without a problem.
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.
4 years long time wait class 701
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!!!
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.
Even though they’ve gone to 2×2 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!
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.
Seats are bad. Those tables don't move and people get stuck under them.
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.
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.
3:02 – Better not tell Trump supporters there's a location near London called "Woking"!
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.
£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?
Pretty poor design flaws I think. Should be doing better than this in this age.
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…
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.
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?
Three months later in May and I STILL haven't seen one in service!
Thank fuck a toilet i have been drunk on this train journey multiple times. Finally a bog.
3:16
Make trains with level boarding in mind CHALLENGE IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Meanwhile the long suffering users of the Shepperton line still have 455s which are ancient, not big enough, and ridiculously hot, with only side opening windows. Effectively no ventilation. Occasionally we get a 450. Recent cock ups with them include regularly showing up as 4 carriage trains instead of 8 (so that's half a train), or having the air con set at maximum heat in August. Yes really. Yesterday the temperature reached 43 degrees on a 450, the air con was belting out heat, and being an air conned train the windows don't open. SWR you are a shower of s###.
I'm dreading the day these will replace the old fleet. The old ones have charm, are cozy and comfortable well cushioned seats. I don't care much for usb sockets…
Their latest (same) excuse for these units still being sat unused, is that the 'Windscreen Wipers are too big!' . . . . Riiiiigght!