I’m sure there are some people disappointed on this forum to hear that the Class 442 project on SWR has been abandoned. So it would be great to see the Class 442 on TSW. There are a couple choice of routes: 1. London Waterloo to Portsmouth/Weymouth. They were used by Network South East from 1987 which later became South West Trains after being privatised in 1996. In 2007, they were withdrawn. 2. London Victoria to Gatwick Airport/Brighton. They were used by Gatwick Express from 2008 to 2017. 3. SWR project. When First Group and MTR won the franchise in 2017 (which is why the operator is now called South Western Railway instead of South West Trains), they announced that they would use 18 Class 442s for the London Waterloo to Portsmouth services and they would be maintained at Bournemouth. They briefly entered service in the summer of 2019 and again in early 2020. But as of last week, SWR have decided to abandon the project after spending £45 million pounds including retractioning half the sets. Obviously if there was a SWR Route, Class 442 won’t be the main traction but it would be nice to see it as a loco DLC as it did run briefly and there would have been countless empty stock runs for testing and driver training.
Apparently major issues with the retractioned sets has caused SWR to reject them - I believe legal action may be occurring so more details are not public
Would be nice if we could have a route with the 442’s on. We could either have a SWR route with a desiro or, depending on the time east coast way is set, make London to Brighton and use them for gatex services
