British Rail Class 456

The British Rail Class 456 electrical multiple units 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 delivered into traffic painted in Network SouthEast blue, red and white livery. Units were numbered in the range 456001-024. Each unit consisted of two carriages; a driving motor and a driving trailer. The technical description of the unit formation is DMSO+DTSO. Individual carriage numbers were as follows:


 * 64735-64758 - DMSO
 * 78250-78273 - DTSO

When first introduced, the units suffered from many technical and reliability problems, which delayed the replacement of the 2EPB units. However, once they settled down the units were used on many services, including London Bridge to London Victoria via Crystal Palace, and London Victoria to Horsham. Before the lines closed in 1997 to allow the building of Tramlink, Class 456 units worked services on the West Croydon to Wimbledon Line. Recently, more Class 456 EMU trains have recently been allocated to Victoria - Epsom via Sutton and West Croydon, especially at peak times, as well as services from Epsom Downs and Dorking.

Current operations
Since the privatisation of Britain's railways, the entire Class 456 fleet passed into the Southern (formerly known as South Central) franchise, which was originally won by Connex South Central. Only one unit, No. 456024, was repainted in white and yellow Connex livery, when it was named Sir Cosmo Bonsor after a chairman of the South Eastern Railway. The rest of the fleet had remained in NSE livery, until summer 2006 when the fleet started to be repainted.

In 2000, Connex lost the South Central franchise to the Go-Ahead Group, who rebranded the company as Southern in 2004.



Refurbishment
In March 2005, No. 456006 was hauled away to Wolverton where it has been studied for corrosion assessment, this caused some doubt to whether they would be refurbished. However, in a statement in April 2006 Southern said the class will receive a 'refresh', this meant they would not receive a refurbishment as large as the 455s, since the 456s are 10 years younger and already have high backed seats (although a different design). Also, on the newly released sets, new CCTV cameras and flooring have been installed, this not mentioned on the original refurbishment plan.

All units have now been 'refreshed' and have been painted into Southern green colours. No. 456006 has being completed in a new, one-off promotional livery for rail safety on the Southern network. 456013 will now have an experimental cab cooling system installed and 456022 will have some experimental air conditioning fitted, in an effort to make drivers' jobs easier.

Southern have now removed the toilets from the trains, to provide more capacity. Despite this the Class 456 EMU trains have lost 2 seats from each pair, due to a space being cleared for wheelchairs and pushchairs.

Criticism
The refurbishment of the sets wasn't as extensively rebuilt as with the British Rail Class 455 EMU trains. Currently, there was no electronic announcement boards on board, which meant that when they work in multiple with the 455s, none of their Passenger Information System visual boards work, and the automatic announcements cannot be played. However this was rectified in 2009, when a Passenger Information System was fitted to the trains.