The new trains are supposed to start arriving in late 2026. That’s what Transport for London keeps saying. But, uh, we’ve heard that before. Remember when they promised them for the Queen’s Jubilee? Yeah, me neither. Let’s just say optimism is a risky sport on the Tube.
Right now, the plan is for the first few trains to begin passenger service around 2026. Not all at once—don’t get carried away. It’s a slow roll-out, like a very sluggish parade. Think of it as a gentle handover from the horse-drawn era to the steam age. Actually, that’s an insult to steam.
Why are they taking so long? (A cry for help)
Good question! The short version: everything is complicated. The new trains are made by Siemens, in a fancy factory in Goole, Yorkshire. That factory needed to be built first. Then the trains need testing. And testing. And more testing. Because if a train breaks down under Heathrow, you’ve got a very unhappy crowd of people missing flights to Barcelona.
Also, the old signalling system on the Piccadilly line is, and I say this with love, archaic. It’s like trying to run a smartphone app on a Pentium II computer. The new trains need new signals to actually run efficiently. That upgrade? It’s happening. Slowly. Like watching paint dry on a very cold day.
