SWT Class 707 in passenger service

Virgin Trains too surely?

I'd hadn't thought of that. A well established transport magazine devoted a two page article on how SWT was the last of it's kind, as you have pointed out it's evidently not companies. Looks like il have to trawl out that snippet.

Right folks, after some research I didn't find the exact article but did manage to find a BBC news article citing that, "South West Trains is the only franchise to have remained in the same hands since privatisation 21 years ago." I evidently had blurred the definitions of TOC's and Franchises when writing the initial post. Stagecoach have of course been the custodians of SWT since it's inception.

Now given the factually correct comments from rincew1nd and Chris M , Im guessing that Paul Clifton (BBC South transport correspondent) has made this comment based on the following histories of the other remaining franchises and their parent companies.

Virgin Trains (West Coast): Virgin Rail Group was awarded the InterCity West Coast franchise in January 1997, operations commenced on 9 March 1997, in October of that year Virgin Trains Group sold 49% of it's shares to Stagecoach. Both the Virgin CrossCountry and Virgin Trains West Coast franchises were suspended in favour of management contracts in July 2002.

Chiltern Railways: In June 1996 M40 Trains was awarded the Chiltern Railways franchise, operations commenced on 21 July 1996. In September 2006 John Laing (part of the original ex-BR management buyout) was purchased by Henderson Equity Partners. In January 2008 Laing Rail was purchased by Deutsche Bahn and Chiltern became part of the DB Regio group. A restructure in early 2011 saw DB Regio become a subsidiary of Arriva UK Trains.

c2c: The London, Tilbury & Southend franchise was due to start in February 1996, but after the discovery of ticketing and settlement irregularities within hours of the scheduled handover with the preferred bidder, Enterprise Rail, it was re-tendered. In May 1996, the franchise was awarded to Prism Rail. It began operating as LTS Rail on 26 May 1996. In May 2000, (as mentioned by aslefshrugged ) the business was rebranded as c2c. In July 2000, c2c was included in the sale of Prism Rail to National Express. In February 2017 National Express sold c2c to Trenitalia.

So, was SWT the only remaining franchise (up until yesterday) to have the same parent company since privatisation?

It's very unlikely that they'll be scrapped. They'll find a home somewhere, I'm sure. As for why they've been dropped, in part down to leasing costs, in part down to the desire to have a common fleet for all of the suburban work rather like the S stock situation. If Siemens had been able to do a good deal on the 707s with a bit of fettling to make them more closely match the needs of the new operators, then they could have been retained and added to in greater numbers, but instead there is the new fleet.

It sort of depends on what you mean by 'capacity' and 'specification'

When SWT ordered the 707s they wanted them to have a high capacity for standing passengers, so although not going to the extremes of TfL trains and having longitudinal seating, the 707s do feature wide isles and relatively few seats compared to other suburban EMU builds, plus large circulation areas by the doors to facilitate speedy boarding / alighting at peak times.

By contrast the new franchise owner emphasised 'quality' in its bids - for example putting toilets on all trains. This comes at a price because the average 'accessible toilet' module (1 per unit needed if toilets are installed) takes up 1/3rd of a coach that could otherwise be occupied by seats or provide standing space (as is the case in the 707s). True 10 car fixed formation trains will save space by removing two driving cabs, but overall the new units being procured will not necessarily have more capacity overall than the 707s - with lots of standee space being lost to fit toilets and seats, though the overall 'specification' will be better as it were....

I assume you mean the 458s - the 485 were the old Standard Tube stock units on the Isle of Wight. That solution worked because there was a fleet of eight car trains (the 460s) which could be reduced to five car, the spare cars then being added to the 4 car class 458s to make them 5 car as well. There was no need to convert driving to non driving cars, or vice versa. Converting the 707s from five car to six car would need either sourcing 30 new intermediate cars, or converting ten cars from driving to non-driving, which means major structural work.

SWT was one of the first two franchises to be launched, (there were to have been three, but the aforementioned discovery of ticketing fraud caused the plug to be pulled on the third) The other one was Great Western, which has been through several changes of area covered (it now includes the former Thames Trains franchise and part of the Wales and Wessex one), and owner.