British Rail Class 357
The British Rail Class 357 Electrostar is a class of alternating current electric multiple unit passenger train built by Adtranz until 2001, later Bombardier, at Derby Litchurch Lane Works between 1999 and 2002. They were delivered in two batches at a cost of approximately £292million.
They are the first member of the Electrostar family, which also includes Classes 375, 376, 377, 378, 379 and 387, and are the most numerous type of EMU built in the post-privatisation period of Britain's railways. They have the same basic design, bodyshell and core structure as the Turbostar diesel multiple unit, which is in turn the most common post-privatisation diesel multiple unit family, and both evolved from the Class 168 Clubman design by Adtranz. The Class 357 fleet is operated by c2c on the London, Tilbury and Southend line.
Description
The Clubman/Turbostar/Electrostar platform is a modular design, optimised for speedy manufacture and easy maintenance. It consists of an underframe, which is created by seam-welding a number of aluminium alloy extrusions, upon which bodyside panels are mounted followed by a single piece roof, again made from extruded sections. The car ends are made from fibreglass and steel, and are Huck-bolted onto the main car bodies. Underframe components are collected in 'rafts', which are bolted into slots on the underframe extrusion. The mostly aluminium alloy body gives light weight to help acceleration and energy efficiency. Electrostar units have a shorter version of the Turbostar's body.Class 357 units were built with capability, although the maximum line speed on the London, Tilbury and Southend line is at present only. They all have air conditioning, air suspension, CCTV, standard class 3+2 Chapman seating throughout, 28 computers, sliding plug doors, and rheostatic and air disc brakes, and now have regenerative capacity. As with all Electrostar units, they use insulated-gate bipolar transistor AC motor drives. They have Tightlock fully automatic couplers but are only interoperable within their own class with other Class 357 units. There are orange LED dot matrix displays at the front of each unit which show the time due at the destination and the name of the destination, e.g. "17.10 Shoeburyness", or "Not in Service" or "Empty to Depot" as necessary. The time due at the destination updates to the new time due if the train is delayed. There are also LED displays inside, at the end of each carriage above the gangway which give route and customer service information.
Class 357/0
The first batch of 44 Class 357/0 units were ordered at a cost of £200million by Prism Rail in March 1997 to replace the slam-door units, and allow the return of 18 hired sliding-door units to their other franchise West Anglia Great Northern. Construction started in 1999, and they are currently leased by c2c from Porterbrook. They were built in the green LTS Rail colour scheme, painted with a white livery with dark green doors and underskirt. Their interior consists of dark green seat moquette with alternating rows of large flecks of light blue and light green, light green plastic seat tops with slots in the side for reservation tickets with dark green insets, a stone pattern linoleum floor, purple plastic interior, light green handrails and metal luggage racks with large circular perforations and light green edges, and dark green stickers on the inter-carriage gangway doors. The "door out of order" display is in between the interior door buttons, with the door close button above and the door open button below, unlike in the 357/2 units. These units were fitted with the voice of Julie Berry.All 44 units were due to enter service by 1 November 1999, but were marred by late deliveries due to safety certification problems and reliability problems, resulting in the delivery of the units during 2000, and leading to their temporary withdrawal in October 2001. As a result, Bombardier built two further units free of charge, bringing the total to 46 units.
Units are formed of four vehicles, and are numbered in the range 357001–357046. Each unit is formed of two outer driving motors, an intermediate motor and an intermediate trailer. The technical description of the formation is Driving Motor Open Standard A +Motor Standard Open +Pantograph Trailer Open Standard Lavatory +Driving Motor Open Standard B.
Class 357/2
Prism Rail was purchased by National Express in September 2000, and the franchise was rebranded as c2c once the Class 357/0 units were in service. The second batch of 28 Class 357/2 units were ordered at a cost of £92million by c2c in 2000 primarily to replace the remaining units. Construction started in 2001, and they were delivered between September 2001 and May 2002. They are owned by Angel Trains and leased by c2c, at an initial cost of £900 a day. Due to the rebranding, they have a white livery with grey doors, and are internally branded to the c2c purple colour scheme with magenta handrails, magenta stickers on the inter-carriage gangway doors with c2c branding: "culture2club2commuters2culture2club2", and a light grey linoleum floor with white, dark grey and light purple flecks. The "door out of order" display is above the door close button, which is above the door open button, unlike in the 357/0 units. These units were fitted with DVA with the voice of Julie Berry.The last slam-door units were withdrawn on 31 March 2003, resulting in c2c being the first train operating company to replace its entire fleet with new trains.
The 357/2, have started to receive a refurbishment. This is almost identical to the 357/3, however there has been no seats removed and no grab handles fitted. A similar refurbishment will be placed onto the 357/0.
Units are currently numbered in the range 357201–357211. The formation of each four-car unit is identical to that of the Class 357/0 units. 357212-357228 have been converted to 357/3.
Class 357/3
On 27 July 2015, unit 357323 was debuted by c2c in a revised configuration, with wider aisle from 2+2 seating, instead of the common 3+2 arrangement. It also featured the 'refreshed' internal livery with pink back handles, and grab handles in the gangway. They now feature pink "metro" stickers on the doors and windows adjacent to the doors.Livery, problems and maintenance
In June 2001, units 357025 and 357027 had vinyl stickers applied with two prototype variants of the proposed purplish blue and magenta c2c livery at Bombardier's Derby Litchurch Lane Works. They were delivered to East Ham EMU Depot for evaluation. Each set of vinyl stickers cost about £40,000. Rollout of the new livery on the whole fleet began by mid-2002, and was completed over the next three months. Hence, although the underlying paintwork and interiors of the two sub-classes were different when delivered, their exterior appearance is identical, and the only way to distinguish them externally is by their numbering. When the Quiet Zone car was introduced in each set, this was marked on the exterior of the doors by a magenta and white sticker.On 19 April 2004, the unusually large rate of increase in atmospheric pressure led to an airlock in the transformer oil system, causing the computer software to lower their pantographs; resulting in failure of eight Class 357 trains and causing service disruption. After their technical problems were sorted out, they have since been among the most reliable fleet of EMUs in the United Kingdom, winning Best Modern Era EMU at the Golden Spanners Awards from 2005 to 2007, for an average annual miles per casualty figure of 43,180 in 2005, 37,391 in 2006, and 45,459 in 2007.
The Class 357 units are all normally maintained by Alstom service technicians at c2c's East Ham Depot, which won the Golden Spanner Award for Maintenance Team of the Year at the Annual National Rail Awards in 2005 and 2006 and their Shoeburyness depot.
In December 2005, c2c's East Ham depot began putting advertising vinyl wraps on some carriages, starting with branding the MSO intermediate trailer car 74716 in set 357216 as a 'Cough-Free Zone' by the cough syrup makers Benylin for the winter.
In June 2009, c2c and Bombardier began a repainting programme on the Class 357 units beginning with 357203. When the vinyl wraps were taken off the Class 357 units, slight corrosion caused by water getting trapped behind the vinyl was found in the aluminium around the doors, so a bodywork maintenance and repair programme was carried out. The corrosion was treated by rubbing the aluminium down and repainting it with two-pack paint. More serious corrosion caused by water seeping in through a poorly-sealed join between panels was found behind several panels on the lower part of the vehicle bodysides, which had spread to the outside. A thick, tight mastic seal was introduced between the panels to prevent this issue from re-occurring. To save money during construction, stainless steel bolts were used to secure the external aluminium panels in place; however, this resulted in galvanic corrosion of the more reactive aluminium, so the bolts have been replaced by aluminium ones. Salts in water catalyse corrosion, a problem for the c2c fleet as they run beside the sea.
After repair at Derby Litchurch Lane Works, 357203 was repainted and re-entered service on 30 July 2009. Similar work was carried out on the rest of the fleet over the next 21 months at Bombardier's Ilford Depot, where the units were repainted into their original white colour, but with dark blue doors, and branded with both "national express" and "c2c" logos in lower-case. The "Quiet Zone" stickers are now white with sky-blue lettering instead of magenta with white lettering. c2c ran a special "Farewell to the Blue Train" railtour service to commemorate the last day of running in passenger service of the blue livery on Saturday 5 March 2011.
Special liveries include unit 357318 which has a Pride livery for Southend Pride 2022, unit 357008 "going gold" for a Leigh-On-Sea based charity Gold Geese. The gold livery was unveiled on 1 September 2022 raising awareness for Childhood Cancer across the UK and Essex. In March 2023, unit 357016 was unveiled in a special livery for a partnership with the British Transport Police, to publicise their new App "Railway Guardian". The blue livery features QR codes leading customers to download the new app in order to help improve the safety for passengers travelling on the railway.