Under the British Rail

British Rail

British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...

 TOPS

TOPS

Total Operations Processing System, or TOPS, is a computer system for managing the locomotives and rolling stock owned by a rail system...

 computer system, Class 415 was allocated to surviving examples of the Southern Railway (United Kingdom) 4-Sub Class electric multiple unit

Electric multiple unit

An electric multiple unit or EMU is a multiple unit train consisting of self-propelled carriages, using electricity as the motive power. An EMU requires no separate locomotive, as electric traction motors are incorporated within one or a number of the carriages...

s built between 1941 and 1951. Details of the origins and history of that class are found in the SR Class 4Sub

SR Class 4Sub

The Southern Railway and the British Railways used the designation Sub to cover a wide variety of electric multiple units that were used on inner-suburban workings in the South London area. The designation ‘Sub’ was first officially used in 1941 to refer to newly-built 4-car units...

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History

179 out of the 184 new units constructed between 1946 and 1951 were still surviving at the introduction of the TOPS computer system in the early 1970s, but were expected to have limited working lives. All surviving units were allocated to Class 405, but divided into two sub-classes. Sub-class 405/1 included the former Southern Railway sets numbered between 4112 and 4387, and sub-class 405/2 included the former British Railways sets built after 1949 and numbered 4601 and 4753. All had been withdrawn by 1983.

Preservation

Class 405/2 unit number 4732 is currently Stored at the Electric Railway Museum, Baginton

Coventry Railway Centre

The Electric Railway Museum is located in Warwickshire, south of Coventry city, outside Baginton, and near to Coventry Airport. The heritage railway centre was also known as "The Airfield Line" as the railway was built on the site of a greenfield...

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