A South Western Railway boss says he is unsure of a final date for when all the rail operator’s new Arterio trains will roll out, as the rail company seeks to try and speed up training its drivers for the new fleet.

South Western Railway (SWR) invested £1bn into a new 90-strong fleet of trains that it promised to “transform every journey of our suburban network”.

The new Arterio trains have room for more customers, with each 10-car train providing over 50 per cent more capacity, as well as being more technologically advanced and sustainable than previous trains.

Five Arterio trains have so far been put out in service covering stations such as Clapham Junction to Windsor & Eton Riverside, while SWR announced in November that the trains would also soon serve stations such as Chessington South, Guildford and Reading.

However, the rail operator is still unsure as to when all 90 trains will be running on the network.

David Wilby, SWR’s regional development manager, told a meeting of Wandsworth Council’s passenger transport liaison group on Monday that he did not have a concrete date for the trains to be up and running.

While speaking about trains running through Wandsworth, Councillor Jenny Yates, asked Mr Wilby if he knew of the likely date of operation, and he replied: “Er, no”.

“We have identified some measures in the future around training, and the training of drivers, that will accelerate the training package that we offer.

“We still hope to have the trains rolled out according to schedule. But, at the moment, it’s not going as we planned and as we previously said.”

Mr Wilby added: “All the red trains were planned to be replaced with the new ones. Everything you see with eight carriages is planned to be replaced with 10-car walk-through trains.

“You can see those [trains] – they’re parked up in Clapham Junction most of the time.

“The trains are here – it’s just the training to bring them into service that is taking longer than expected.”

An industry insider claimed to The Standard that the delay is rooted in SWR being unable to release drivers to attend training programmes for the new Arterio trains, as sending them off would result in driver shortages on its routes.

However, SWR say they manage to minimise disruption on day-to-day services while the rolling training programme is underway, and deny that the delay of the roll-out is related to driver numbers.

A South Western Railway spokesperson told The Independent: “We are sorry that the Arterio rollout is taking longer than previously expected.

“We are continuing to work with all our stakeholders as we seek to speed up the training programme and to deliver the customer benefits of the new Arterio trains as quickly as possible.”

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