· Start of £5 million programme to improve local train fleet
· Part of continued investment to refurbish all of the company’s trains
Passengers travelling on East Midlands Trains’ local routes will soon be benefitting from improvements to their train service as the company today embarks on a £5m programme to refurbish its 28 Class 153/156 trains.
The improvement programme, which will be carried out at the company’s Neville Hill depot in Leeds, will deliver a number of passenger benefits including re-upholstered seating, new and improved internal lighting, new carpets and the installation of CCTV on all trains. In addition, all of the trains will have extensive modification work to ensure they are running as efficiently and reliably as possible.
Commenting, Tim Sayer, Engineering Director for East Midlands Trains said: “Through our Class 158 refurbishment programme, passengers are seeing first-hand the transformation that these changes can make to the on-train environment, and we’re having some great feedback as a result.
“We’re confident the extensive improvement work to our Class 153 and 156 trains will result in a much better travelling environment that will be welcomed by our passengers.”
The Class 153/156 trains are used to operate services on East Midlands Trains’ local routes, such as Nottingham-Derby-Matlock, Derby-Crewe, Nottingham-Worksop, Nottingham-Lincoln and Nottingham-Skegness.
Work starts today on the first train (153 319), which will take around seven weeks to complete. A total of 39 carriages are being refurbished and the programme is scheduled to take 16 months.
East Midlands Trains has recently completed a £10 million refurbishment of its Class 158 trains, mainly used to operate services on the busy Liverpool-Norwich route and the £9 million refurbishment of the HSTs is due for completion in August. In addition, plans are already underway for improvements to the Meridian fleet to start later this year. Once all of these programmes are complete, it will mean every train operated by East Midlands Trains will have benefitted from improvements.