“IT’S just like Wimbledon,” says Chris Buckland as he walks around 4-VEP No. 423417 Gordon Pettitt at Strawberry Hill on February 21. “Sometimes I just come in here and listen. The unit is cut in and people are working on it… it’s wonderful.”
The depot is just that, a working depot, complete with live 750v DC third-rail. Next to the main shed, a pair of South Western Railway Class 450s are stabled between peak-time duties.
The site is in the midst of a triangle with various electric multiple units passing all day. Staff for the SWR site come and go.
Inside the shed are a mix of current and former railway people busying themselves on various tasks required to keep the ‘423’ operational. These tasks have been devised by Chris who wants the depot to operate as if it was still Wimbledon, the depot he only recently retired from having spent 41 years on the railway. There are spares storage areas, workbenches and all sorts of modern equipment required to keep trains operating.
Outside the main shed is an office building where exams are planned, payments are made and tea is consumed. It’s here that Steve Upton comes into his element with his cheerful attitude, incessant jokes and, on the day of RE’s visit, cooking for the troops.
Together with Gwilym Jones, Steve and Chris were the original ‘Three Musketeers’ who, in a pub, decided (most likely after at least five pints each Steve jokes) that saving a Southern Region Mk.1 slam-door EMU and returning it to the main line was a good idea. Sadly ‘Gwil’ passed away in 2019, but his memory and legacy lives on through his friends. “He’d have been so proud,” says Steve.
Electric multiple unit preservation is tough. Projects have been abandoned and vehicles scrapped. In the same week Rail Express visited Strawberry Hill to see the work on the 4-VEP, news broke that the sole-surviving Class 503 would leave Margate with two vehicles set for scrap. They won’t be the first EMU vehicles saved that have subsequently been disposed of and it’s doubtful they will be the last.
“You need a plan. What do you want, how will you do it, how will you fund it and where will you keep it?” says Steve Upton while making coffee at the depot. In this
