Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) welcomes the 100th Class 377 Electrostar following the completion of the £100m Project Aurora upgrade programme, bringing new and innovative renovations to the rolling stock which will improve reliability and the overall passenger experience.
Project Aurora will see a total of 270 trains, consisting of 1086 carriages, renovated, with the current projections for overall completion in 2025.
The process of upgrading the trains has been streamlined to accommodate two full enhancements every week at the GTR depot in Selhurst, which are then returned to passenger services. Upon the project’s culmination, all of the 270 trains will house the infrastructural developments that include the requisite 250kms of wiring, 35,000 lighting tubes, 32,000 power/dual USB sockets and 2,500,000 fixings and fasteners.
GTR’s Engineering Director Steve Lammin said:
“We’re delighted to celebrate this ‘ton-up’ milestone with Porterbrook and Alstom. We’ve achieved it by giving these great trains a broad-ranging upgrade, including features our passengers have asked for, at a rate of two per week. I’m really pleased we’re working together to provide our customers with an even better on-board experience and more reliability over the coming years.”
The implemented upgrades will improve the passenger experience as they traverse the network, providing electric plug and dual USB sockets at every seat, enhanced passenger information services with new digital screens, energy saving LED lighting and an automatic passenger counting system that will aid in GTR analysis of services, thus enabling more effective and reliable timetables.
The fleet houses on-board data recorders and updates to the Train Data Network, thus enabling an enhanced remote monitoring of the trains operational systems, which will improve the reliability whilst reducing the overall time in which the rolling stock spends out of service due to maintenance and repairs.
Each train is also fitted with forward-facing and track debris CCTV, which provides the ability to live stream the journey remotely and download images.
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