British Rail Class 415
Encyclopedia
British Rail Class 415 (or 4EPB) was a suburban 750 V DC
third rail
electric multiple unit
commissioned by the Southern Region of British Rail
ways. Built between 1951 and 1957, it became the most numerous class on the region after the withdrawal of the 4Subs
. The final trains were withdrawn in the 1990s, replaced by Class 455
, 456
, 465
and 466
.
The British Rail designation Class 415 was applied to a group of four coach, 3rd rail electric multiple unit
s constructed between 1951 and 1961 and in service from 1951 to 1995.
4Sub
design, but incorporating electro-pneumatic brakes
, unit-to-unit buckeye couplings
, roller blind headcode displays in place of the stencil holders used previously, and without external doors to the driver's cab. There were motor-generator
s for the lighting and current control whereas previous practice had been to use series lighting
and a voltage divider for the control circuits.
The first units built were based on Southern Railway
designs and utilised standard Southern railway jig
s, being constructed using standard Southern Railway components such as doors and underframes and being built to a standard Southern body profile. The doyen of the class, unit 5001, was completed at Eastleigh in 1951. Further examples were built at Eastleigh up until 1957.
In 1960, the first British Railways design units appeared. Intended to replace the 1925 design Southern Railway suburban electric stock, these units were based on British Railways Mark One coaching stock with a different body profile and underframe length from the earlier Class 415 units. The first two units (5301/02), however, were composed of Mark One profile Driving Motor Brake Seconds and Southern Railway profile intermediate vehicles. Unit 5303 was the first to sport intermediate trailers of Mark One profile. Two units differed from the rest of the batch in featuring B5 (S) bogies to enable use on peak hour commuter trains to Eastbourne
. Reformations over the years, following accidents and incidents, led to a few units becoming composed of a mixture of original design stock of Southern Railway outline and the later, Mark One based, British Railways stock.
In the earlier, Southern-style 5001-5260 series, most units (all of which were one class only) comprised a driving motor open saloon including brake at each end of the set, sandwiching a trailer open and a high-density (6 per side) trailer ten-compartment vehicle with access from the passenger doors; there was no gangway down the coach. A very small number of these 4-EPBs comprised either two open-trailers or two compartment-trailers. A small number of the trailers had been built as 'composites' - a mixture of First and Third Class - and were later fitted out as 9-compartment one-class vehicles but with the former 1st accommodation still identifiable with extra-wide compartments. In the mid-1960s, a number of compartments were marked as women-only, because of the density of cigarette smoke at rush-hour in the general compartments, but as these were not well-regarded they were withdrawn in the late 1960s in favour of non-smoking cars, marked by inverted red triangles om the windows. At first one car per set was allocated to non-smoking, but soon one driving unit and one trailer in each set were the norm.
The production vehicles in the BR series 5301-5370 had slightly higher capacity motor coaches, identical vehicles at each end of the set, with an internal partition splitting the saloon into two smaller ones, and a pair of identical trailers each comprising 5 compartments and a 5-bay open saloon, with the compartment end of each coach always back-to-back with its neighbour.
However, on Wednesday 23 March 1988, a woman was found murdered in a compartment EPB car on an Orpington/London Victoria working which led to Network South East reconfiguring the then-remaining unrefurbished SR-design 4-EPBs; as a result all compartment stock ran limited workings in busy periods and had a red stripe at the cantrail. This stock did not work after 8pm and was known as 4COM.
Most British Rail Class 415 units were withdrawn in the mid-1980s, owing to their partial replacement by newer stock such as the British Rail Class 455
units and the fact that many units contained asbestos
. However, a significant number of the units were "facelifted". The asbestos was removed and the units' interiors were improved. This resulted in some re-numbering of stock, so that the earlier units built in the style of the Southern Railway became the 54xx series whilst the British Railways style units became the 56xx series. Some of the 56xx series units received express gear ratios to allow them to work services between London
and Kent
Coast destinations. Although all the non-refurbished BR Class 415/2s were withdrawn, three Class 415/1s of Southern Railway outline survived until the final withdrawal of Class 415 stock in 1995. These units included 5001, the first unit constructed, and 5176. Both of these units were repainted into liveries previously carried by the class, 5001 receiving British Railways green livery with yellow warning panels and 5176 receiving British Rail blue livery with full yellow ends.
and one intermediate trailer vehicle to the Coventry Railway Centre
in Baginton
. Class pioneer 5001 was also stored following withdrawal in 1995 but no buyer could be found and the unit was stripped and sold for scrap in 2004.
Direct current
Direct current is the unidirectional flow of electric charge. Direct current is produced by such sources as batteries, thermocouples, solar cells, and commutator-type electric machines of the dynamo type. Direct current may flow in a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through...
third rail
Third rail
A third rail is a method of providing electric power to a railway train, through a semi-continuous rigid conductor placed alongside or between the rails of a railway track. It is used typically in a mass transit or rapid transit system, which has alignments in its own corridors, fully or almost...
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...
commissioned by the Southern Region of 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...
ways. Built between 1951 and 1957, it became the most numerous class on the region after the withdrawal of the 4Subs
British Rail Class 405
Under the British Rail TOPS computer system, Class 415 was allocated to surviving examples of the Southern Railway 4-Sub Class electric multiple units built between 1941 and 1951...
. The final trains were withdrawn in the 1990s, replaced by Class 455
British Rail Class 455
The British Rail Class 455 is a type of electric multiple unit drawing power from a 750 V DC third rail. Built by BREL at York works in the early and mid-1980s, they were initially categorised as Class 510 as the successor to the Class 508...
, 456
British Rail Class 456
The British Rail Class 456 electric multiple-unit trains were built by BREL at York Works from 1990-91.- Description :24 two-car units were built as direct replacements for the elderly Class 416 2EPB units which operated on the Central Division of the Southern Region of British Rail. Units were...
, 465
British Rail Class 465
The British Rail Class 465 Networker electric multiple units were built by GEC Alsthom and BREL between 1991 and 1993, and by ABB Rail between 1993 and 1994. They were brought into service from 1991 onwards. They are mostly used on suburban routes serving the South East of England, now operated by...
and 466
British Rail Class 466
The Class 466 750 V DC third rail electric multiple unit is a suburban EMU, which operates with Class 465 EMUs in southeast London and Kent on the Southeastern network...
.
The British Rail designation Class 415 was applied to a group of four coach, 3rd rail 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 constructed between 1951 and 1961 and in service from 1951 to 1995.
Construction
The 4EPB units (4-car Electro-Pneumatic Brake) were a development of the Southern Railway (SR)Southern Railway (Great Britain)
The Southern Railway was a British railway company established in the 1923 Grouping. It linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, South coast resorts and Kent...
4Sub
British Rail Class 405
Under the British Rail TOPS computer system, Class 415 was allocated to surviving examples of the Southern Railway 4-Sub Class electric multiple units built between 1941 and 1951...
design, but incorporating electro-pneumatic brakes
Electro-pneumatic brake system on British railway trains
The Electro-pneumatic brake system on British railway trains was introduced in 1950. The Southern Region of British Railways operated an intensive self-contained fleet of electric multiple units for suburban and middle distance passenger trains...
, unit-to-unit buckeye couplings
Coupling (railway)
A coupling is a mechanism for connecting rolling stock in a train. The design of the coupler is standard, and is almost as important as the railway gauge, since flexibility and convenience are maximised if all rolling stock can be coupled together.The equipment that connects the couplings to the...
, roller blind headcode displays in place of the stencil holders used previously, and without external doors to the driver's cab. There were motor-generator
Motor-generator
A motor-generator is a device for converting electrical power to another form. Motor-generator sets are used to convert frequency, voltage, or phase of power. They may also be used to isolate electrical loads from the electrical power supply line...
s for the lighting and current control whereas previous practice had been to use series lighting
Series and parallel circuits
Components of an electrical circuit or electronic circuit can be connected in many different ways. The two simplest of these are called series and parallel and occur very frequently. Components connected in series are connected along a single path, so the same current flows through all of the...
and a voltage divider for the control circuits.
The first units built were based on Southern Railway
Southern Railway (Great Britain)
The Southern Railway was a British railway company established in the 1923 Grouping. It linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, South coast resorts and Kent...
designs and utilised standard Southern railway jig
Jig
The Jig is a form of lively folk dance, as well as the accompanying dance tune, originating in England in the 16th century and today most associated with Irish dance music and Scottish country dance music...
s, being constructed using standard Southern Railway components such as doors and underframes and being built to a standard Southern body profile. The doyen of the class, unit 5001, was completed at Eastleigh in 1951. Further examples were built at Eastleigh up until 1957.
In 1960, the first British Railways design units appeared. Intended to replace the 1925 design Southern Railway suburban electric stock, these units were based on British Railways Mark One coaching stock with a different body profile and underframe length from the earlier Class 415 units. The first two units (5301/02), however, were composed of Mark One profile Driving Motor Brake Seconds and Southern Railway profile intermediate vehicles. Unit 5303 was the first to sport intermediate trailers of Mark One profile. Two units differed from the rest of the batch in featuring B5 (S) bogies to enable use on peak hour commuter trains to Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
. Reformations over the years, following accidents and incidents, led to a few units becoming composed of a mixture of original design stock of Southern Railway outline and the later, Mark One based, British Railways stock.
In the earlier, Southern-style 5001-5260 series, most units (all of which were one class only) comprised a driving motor open saloon including brake at each end of the set, sandwiching a trailer open and a high-density (6 per side) trailer ten-compartment vehicle with access from the passenger doors; there was no gangway down the coach. A very small number of these 4-EPBs comprised either two open-trailers or two compartment-trailers. A small number of the trailers had been built as 'composites' - a mixture of First and Third Class - and were later fitted out as 9-compartment one-class vehicles but with the former 1st accommodation still identifiable with extra-wide compartments. In the mid-1960s, a number of compartments were marked as women-only, because of the density of cigarette smoke at rush-hour in the general compartments, but as these were not well-regarded they were withdrawn in the late 1960s in favour of non-smoking cars, marked by inverted red triangles om the windows. At first one car per set was allocated to non-smoking, but soon one driving unit and one trailer in each set were the norm.
The production vehicles in the BR series 5301-5370 had slightly higher capacity motor coaches, identical vehicles at each end of the set, with an internal partition splitting the saloon into two smaller ones, and a pair of identical trailers each comprising 5 compartments and a 5-bay open saloon, with the compartment end of each coach always back-to-back with its neighbour.
However, on Wednesday 23 March 1988, a woman was found murdered in a compartment EPB car on an Orpington/London Victoria working which led to Network South East reconfiguring the then-remaining unrefurbished SR-design 4-EPBs; as a result all compartment stock ran limited workings in busy periods and had a red stripe at the cantrail. This stock did not work after 8pm and was known as 4COM.
Most British Rail Class 415 units were withdrawn in the mid-1980s, owing to their partial replacement by newer stock such as the British Rail Class 455
British Rail Class 455
The British Rail Class 455 is a type of electric multiple unit drawing power from a 750 V DC third rail. Built by BREL at York works in the early and mid-1980s, they were initially categorised as Class 510 as the successor to the Class 508...
units and the fact that many units contained asbestos
Asbestos
Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals used commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their eponymous, asbestiform habit: long, thin fibrous crystals...
. However, a significant number of the units were "facelifted". The asbestos was removed and the units' interiors were improved. This resulted in some re-numbering of stock, so that the earlier units built in the style of the Southern Railway became the 54xx series whilst the British Railways style units became the 56xx series. Some of the 56xx series units received express gear ratios to allow them to work services between London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
Coast destinations. Although all the non-refurbished BR Class 415/2s were withdrawn, three Class 415/1s of Southern Railway outline survived until the final withdrawal of Class 415 stock in 1995. These units included 5001, the first unit constructed, and 5176. Both of these units were repainted into liveries previously carried by the class, 5001 receiving British Railways green livery with yellow warning panels and 5176 receiving British Rail blue livery with full yellow ends.
Interior fittings
A refurbishment in the late 1970s/early 1980s started converting the six-seat compartment stock to 3+2-seat open saloons. At the same time, the red-brown horsehair seating and metal-framed cord overhead luggage racks were replaced with standard Mark 2 seats and metal racks. 2 x 25w. ceiling bulbs lit each compartment, and the partitions were initially painted in light cream: three publicity panels about 15 cm x 40 cm filled the space on the compartment walls between the top of the seats and the luggage racks - the central panel was originally a mirror, but as these proved dangerous in service they were soon replaced with normal advertising. The other fittings were a chain alarm-cord in a recess above and to one side of the door, and the door-lock itself, a simple spring-loaded slide: the slam-doors could be opened at speed, albeit at considerable risk to the passenger doing so. The door window could also be opened full-length into a recess in the door panel beneath, initially supported at the bottom by a leather strop, which was soon replaced by a metal friction-bar at the top, bearing on the side-rails - in general they were either closed or with a one- or two-inch opening. The flooring was a strong linoleum on wooded baulks: the linoleum was not present in the guards compartments, which together with the cabs were painted in a dark green. A mirror to a roof periscope facing along the length of the unit was fitted centrally to the guard's side of the rear compartment partition, together with a handle for the sweep=arm cleaner of the roof glasa. Underneath was a small worksurface about 2'x1', a swivel-chair screwed to the floor, and variously a short ladder for evacuating coaches, sometimes a medical cabinet, and a rail-shorting bar would be fixed to the side of the compartment. The driver's cab was fitted with one flap-down seat on each side: the driver occupied the left-hand position.Summary of sub-classes
- 415/1 - unrefurbished 4EPB stock of Southern Design.
- 415/2 - unrefurbished 4EPB stock of BR Design.
- 415/4 - refurbished 4EPB stock of Southern Design (from 1980), numbered in the 54xx series.
- 415/5 - Consolidated compartment 4EPB stock of both designs, numbered in the 55xx series.
- 415/6 - refurbished 4EPB stock of BR Design, numbered in the 56xx series.
- 415/7 - refurbished 4EPB stock of BR Design, with express gearing to 90 mph. These units retained *56xx series numbers.
Preservation
One unit, Class 415/1 unit 5176, survives. One of the two "heritage" units (along with 5001), it was repainted in British Rail blue in the early 1990s and survived until the end of EPB workings in 1995. After spending several years in storage, in 1999 the unit was split, with three vehicles going to the Northamptonshire Ironstone Railway TrustNorthamptonshire Ironstone Railway Trust
The Northamptonshire Ironstone Railway Trust operates a mile long heritage railway line at Hunsbury Hill, south-west of Northampton. The line is mainly dedicated to freight working, featuring many sharp curves and steep gradients which were typical of the industrial railway, but rides are...
and one intermediate trailer vehicle to the Coventry Railway Centre
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...
in Baginton
Baginton
Baginton is a village and civil parish in the Warwick district of Warwickshire, England, and has a common border with the City of Coventry of the West Midlands county. With a population of 801 , Baginton village is four miles south of Coventry city centre and seven miles north of...
. Class pioneer 5001 was also stored following withdrawal in 1995 but no buyer could be found and the unit was stripped and sold for scrap in 2004.