Kentish Express Ashford & District
Southeastern train fleet refurbishment on track
The project to refurbish a third of Southeastern’s entire rail fleet has reached a major milestone this month.
More than 50% of the trains earmarked for a revamp have now been completed.
The scheme to make carriages of the rail company’s 112 Class 375 trains brighter and more comfortable for passengers began in 2015, and 65 trains have now been returned to service.
The work on the trains, which run on routes between coastal Kent and East Sussex and central London stations, includes a complete respray outside and a repaint internally.
New carpets and lino have also been laid inside, with replacement windows put in place where needed, and all seats have been removed from carriages and given a deep dry-clean and new seat bases.
Each Class 375, which has either three or four car units, takes around three weeks to refit at the plant in Derby.
The refresh started when the trains were halfway through their 30-year life expectancy and involves around 3,500 man-hours per train, using a team of 35 skilled fitters and technicians.
In total, 20,500 litres of paint will have been used when all 112 trains are completed.
A total of 16,400 sq m of carpet and 6,400 sq m of lino will have been replaced.
Mark Johnson, engineering director at Southeastern, said: “I’m very pleased we are now over halfway through this major and extremely worthwhile job that involves giving these trains a thorough refresh.
“Feedback from passengers shows they want their trains to be cleaner and more pleasant and we are carrying out this work, as well as other cleaning work on all our trains, as we are committed to improving our service for our passengers.
“It’s great that we are able to work with our partners to carry out this refresh to our trains, which account for almost one third of our rolling stock.
“I’m sure our customers are noticing the difference as more and more of these newly refitted trains are rolled out.”