First of the new Piccadilly line trains arrives in London – with added grafitti
The first of the new fleet of Piccadilly line trains has arrived in London for a year of testing and has already been damaged by graffiti.
@CrimeLdn @uknip247 @999London @obbsie @totalcrime @MattLCapon
Pictures posted on FB by Simon Roadnight
Not sure if this has been picked up yet, but it appears that the new Piccadilly Line Rolling-stock was Graffitied on its way into London over the weekend when being… pic.twitter.com/d4Tppj51Fi
— Crime Scene Images London (@csi_london) October 14, 2024
The train had been brought through the Channel Tunnel on a long trip from the testing centre in Germany to be delivered to the London Underground’s depot in West London. However, grafitti vandals who had been tracking it along its route have already damaged it. It was a high-profile target within the tagging community, with a rumour of a substantial bounty being offered to the first person to tag one of the new trains.
It’s been suggested that the train may have been attacked while it stopped for about 20 minutes at Latchmere Junction in southwest London in the early hours of the morning.
However, the paint was removed as soon as it arrived at the depot and didn’t harm the train surface.
The British Transport Police is investigating.
Now that it’s in London, the tube train will undergo more compliance testing, and will soon be seen out on the Piccadilly line, usually at night or during engineering hours to build up test milage on the tracks.
The first batch of the new trains are being built in Vienna, but 80 percent will be built in the UK, at Siemens new factory at Goole in Yorkshire.
In total, 95 of the new air-conditioned trains have been ordered for the Piccadilly line, with the first expected to go into service later next year. There is also an option for the same design to be used on the Bakerloo and Central lines in the future, if funding can be found to pay for them.
Possibly there was some protective layer over the paintwork which enabled the graffiti to be easily washed off?
“with a rumour of a substantial bounty being offered to the first person to tag one of the new trains”
who is offering bounties for tagging trains? And why?
They should put up indelible dye sprayers at vulnerable locations & tag the staggers.
Another logical place where it might have happened is in Wembley Yard as the graffitied side of the train was on the non mainline side, as it was sat there four 2 hours and 18 minutes.
Quote
It was a high-profile target within the tagging community,
Translation
Criminals are determined to smash stuff up
Ther’s a non-violent, non-custodial solution to this, actually.
Once one of these criminals is convicted, they should be allowed one set of clothes, then all of the rest of their property will be spray-painted …
AH, I see Andrew Jarman has a similar solution ….
Yes, but suppose it was Banksy, the carriages would be worth millions.
Although in general I am against censorship, in this case I think the graffiti should be blurred out in photos to avoid giving publicity to the vandals who did this.
I hope the cretins who did this are found, and prosecuted, maybe not with a prison sentence, but as a deterrent to others.
A disgrace that they are being designed engineered and built in Austria by Siemens. Assembled in Britain I think that you may mean.
The next lot of tube trains for the Bakerloo and other lines should be designed, engineered and fully built in the UK. Resign now Andy Lord and Mayor Khan you are being badly advised by exporting technology design and engineering Jobs. The Siemens design will be out of date for subsequent line orders, and should obviously be retendered to Alstrom Derby or Hitachi County Durham
With an investment of up to £200 million in the Goole Rail Village and an additional investment of up to £40 million in a state-of-the-art Bogie Assembly and Service Centre, the Siemens Google site will bring up to 1,000 new jobs to the East Riding of Yorkshire, as well as around 1,700 supply chain job opportunities.
What’s your problem?
For ‘Google’ read ‘Goole’