Northern comes clean! ….
As many of you know, we’ve been complaining to Northern about the dirty state of their trains for well over a year. A previous post covers this, with comments as things changed (a bit) ….
A new washing plant was promised for Newton Heath, the Manchester depot where all these diesels are maintained, as well as a new one for Blackpool North together with extra cleaners taken on. Things improved a bit, but not a lot. The Newton Heath plant was due to start at the end of June, then end of July, and now we hear it’s any day now. These plants are owned by Network Rail, not Northern, so sorting these things out seems at times to prove anything but easy!
Then along comes this year’s National Passenger Survey run by Passenger Focus. Northern have been marked down heavily on train cleanliness, considered to be running some of the filthiest trains in the country.
We hear this seems to have sparked Northern’s Board into action, with 17 extra cleaners taken on, 13 of them at Newton Heath, with all units to be given a heavy external and internal clean every few weeks. You’ve probably noticed the difference already. About time, to put it mildly!!
We’ve been given a copy of a presentation Northern recently made on train cleaning to interested parties within “the Railway”, and have been allowed to publish it. It’s a Powerpoint presentation of 428kb downloadable by clicking here. It’s got some railway jargon in it, but we think you’ll understand the important bits.
Once the new washing plant is in operation units should start getting really clean and staying really clean inside and out.
As we’ve said to Northern, only when the diesels on our line are as consistently clean as their electric class 323 fleet maintained at Longsight currently is will we be satisfied.
2 comments 
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August 16th, 2011 at 8:44 am
Excellent news! It is easier to cope with older rolling stock when they are clean inside & out – people appreciate it. Well done Northern at last.
December 15th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
We know Newton Heath now have their new washing plant in operation. However, there’s still plenty of grimy windows going around on their 150s and 156s (as well as grimy paintwork, but we don’t try to look through that!)
I suspect the washing plant will remove recent surface dirt, but the units need a good manual scrub to get the ingrained filth off.
I’ve just come up from Chester on the 1407 with 156455. Very grimy windows, and when the sun was shining we were unable to see out of the right-hand side. However, internally it was spotless. Left in the platform was 150201 awaiting the arrival of the next inbound service to couple up and form the 4-car train on the 1507. 201 was just as grimy, though the underframe was spotless as was the front where the coupler appeared to have been recently replaced. Perhaps David Cameron didn’t look above shoulder height on his recent walkabout Newton Heath Depot! – http://menmedia.co.uk/northeastmanchesteradvertiser/news/s/1466702_pm-david-cameron-timetables-a-newton-heath-depot-visit Yes, it’s a spotless class 142 in the background!