Shropshire Star

Work underway for 2,000 more seats on Virgin Trains' West Midlands fleet

Work is taking place to add 2,100 standard class seats to Virgin Trains' fleet in the West Midlands.

Published

The company's Pendolino trains are having first class carriages transformed into standard class for the West Coast mainline.

It will create an extra 5,500 standard class seats a day by September.

In total 21 Pendolinos will have a carriage converted.

And the work is being undertaken at rail transport firm Alstom's depot in Oxley, Wolverhampton.

Phil Whittingham, managing director at Virgin Trains, said: "Our main focus is always our customers and their needs.

"We have seen demand for our services increase significantly, with more than 34 million journeys made on our trains last year, something that we are very proud of.

"Converting these first class carriages to standard allows us to respond to requests from passengers for more seats on our busiest routes.

"We've also given our Pendolinos a well deserved spring clean and remain as committed as ever to improving the service we offer to our customers."

After the 21 nine-car trains have been upgraded, the remaining 35 eleven-car Pendolinos will also undergo the major interior refresh and a deep clean, with the full Pendolino fleet completed by mid-2016.

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.