British Rail Class 455
an electric multiple-unit passenger train built by BREL York between 1982 and 1985
The British Rail Class 455 are Mark 3-based electric multiple unit (EMU) passenger trains built by BREL between 1982 and 1985. Upon their introduction, they replaced Class 508s as well as aging Southern Railway slam-door stock on commuter services out of London Waterloo.
Whilst the trains were originally built utilising recycled DC traction equipment from Southern Railway 4Sub rolling stock from the 1940s, South West Trains refitted their units with AC traction equipment provided by Vossloh in 2017; despite this change however the trains retained their original gearboxes. The units were last operated on suburban services in Greater London and Surrey by Southern in May 2022, and by South Western Railway in March 2026. They were replaced by the Class 701 EMU on the South Western Railway network.
Description
The Class 455 was originally to be classified as the Class 510, which were planned as a 750 V DC version of the Class 317. However, as the chopper control system at the time was not considered robust enough for the electrically rougher third rail Southern Region, they were fitted with GEC Traction camshaft-control systems instead. The Class 510 designation was changed to Class 455.
The class has the same bodyshell as the Class 317 and Class 318, but as they were designed for inner suburban services they do not feature first class seating, air conditioning or toilet facilities and are restricted to 75 mph (121 km/h). Like the Class 317/318, as well as the diesel Class 150, they are based on the British Rail Mark 3, with a steel construction, unlike the earlier PEP based Class 313, Class 314, Class 315, Class 507 and Class 508, which have aluminium alloy bodies.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “British Rail Class 455” is an electric multiple-unit passenger train built by BREL York between 1982 and 1985. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through British, Rail and Class, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q838494. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1985, 2017 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “British Rail Class 455” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.