The long term plan for Project 483 is to use one of the Island Line Class 483 Trains to help tell the story of the years that the Epping Ongar Railway spent as part of the London Underground and to celebrate the London Transport heritage of the Class 483s, introducing their history to a new audience and providing a unique experience in railway preservation.
In order to achieve this we have secured two serviceable Class 483 units for preservation, 483006 and 483008. which will be moved to an interim storage site. We are not proposing to use these units as hauled coaching stock, but to work with Clayton Equipment Ltd to convert one of them into a sustainable Battery Electric Multiple Unit. In this way we will be able to provide the experience of travelling by electric tube train in as authentic a manner as is possible in the absence of conductor rails.
This innovative railway heritage project hopes to not only provide the Epping Ongar Railway with an operational train of appropriate and sympathetically restored tube stock in the future, but to set a precedent which owning-groups of other heritage EMUs may be able to follow. This could open up electric train preservation in a manner hitherto unseen in the UK.
The units will not be able to be accommodated on the Epping Ongar Railway until restoration and conversion is completed.
The units will be Restored on the Lanelli and Mynydd Mawr Railway
Photograph by Adam Brown at Amb Heritage and Events Photography