South West Trains honoured for fleet excellence

• Salisbury and Wimbledon depots’ success at Golden Spanner Awards

• Four-in-a-row as Salisbury depot recognised for train reliability

 South West Trains has been honoured for the high standard of its train fleet at the prestigious annual Golden Spanner Awards.

The company’s Salisbury and Wimbledon rail depots both picked up awards in the competition, which uses official data to judge train fleet reliability.

Salisbury depot once again won the Golden Spanner award for the most reliable former BR diesel multiple unit fleet – the fourth time in a row that the depot has won this award.

The depot also won a Silver Spanner award for the largest performance improvement to former BR diesel multiple unit stock over the past year due to the significant improvement to the Class 158 fleet.

South West Trains’ Wimbledon depot also won a Silver Spanner for achieving the best performance improvements in the modern generation electrical multiple unit (EMU) category. 

It is the first time the company has won recognition for its EMU fleet in the awards. Most EMUS are maintained by train manufacturers rather than a train operating company, which makes it an even more impressive achievement.

Andy Pitt, Managing Director of South West Trains, said: “As well as reflecting enormous credit on Salisbury and Wimbledon depots, these awards are a tribute to the dedication and professionalism of the whole South West Trains engineering team.”

The Golden Spanner Awards are organised by Modern Railways magazine, and were presented at a ceremony in London.