The British Rail Class 458 (5-JUP) is a class of electric multiple unit passenger trains of the Alstom Coradia Juniper family, built at Washwood Heath between 1998 and 2002 for South West Trains. They were the first new fleet of trains to be delivered following the privatisation of British Rail. The order for the original fleet of 30 four-car trains was placed in 1997, and delivery of the first unit followed in October 1998. The fleet entered passenger service between 2000 and 2003 and is maintained at Wimbledon depot. Between 2013 and 2016, the class was merged with the mechanically similar Class 460 fleet and extensively rebuilt to form a fleet of 36 five-car units—designated Class 458/5—to provide an increase in capacity on services into . The trains are now used by South Western Railway. In March 2021 South Western Railway announced that 28 Class 458 units would be refurbished and redeployed on long-distance services on the Portsmouth Direct line, as a result of the company deciding to abandon their original plan to use upgraded Class 442 units for this purpose. As part of the refurbishment the fifth car will be removed and the passenger saloons will be modified to better meet passenger expectations for longer journeys. History South West Trains began operating the South Western franchise in February 1996, having inherited all of its rolling stock from British Rail. While this included a small number of trains built in the late 1980s and a larger number of suburban units delivered between 1982 and 1985, a significant proportion of the overall fleet was formed by much older slam-door First Generation EMUs, such as Classes and . In order to begin replacing these older units, SWT issued in November 1996 a request for tenders to supply 30 new air-conditioned four-car EMUs, and in 1997 together with rolling stock lessor Porterbrook awarded to Alstom a £90 million contract for their delivery. Some railway industry commentators noted that SWT were going above and beyond the requirements of their franchise award in placing the order, and speculated that it could be a strategy to allay concerns about the fact that the same company—Stagecoach Group—owned both South West Trains and Porterbrook. This represented a potential conflict of interest at a time when rolling stock leasing companies, and Porterbrook in particular, were being criticised for extracting significant profits from leasing cheaply-acquired ex-BR stock. All 30 units,