First Hull Trains £5m modification programme

First Hull Trains has announced the beginning of a major mechanical and electrical modification and reliability improvement project on the company’s fleet of trains.

Part of a £5 million overhaul of the entire Class 180 fleet, along with those of other train operating companies, will go through a comprehensive programme to enable train operators ‘to offer an improvement to reliability in the future’.

Work will include improvements to the provision of on-board heating and air conditioning, the fitting of new bogies to improve ride quality and enhancements to ensure that electrical supplies are constantly maintained within the passenger areas of the train.

Overall the programme involves 15 ‘mini-projects’ on each train unit with the work taking approximately three weeks per train and the whole programme should be completed by early summer 2012.

The first train unit has already started the programme at Loughborough and to support the remaining fleet an alternative unit has been acquired to allow First Hull Trains to minimise delays and disruption.