Improvements for Silver Sets
From late-July until early-2020, we will be running a program of heavy maintenance work on each of our four silver set trains. Customers who normally travel on the 0710 Kidderminster to London Marylebone and the 1615 London Marylebone to Kidderminster are most likely to notice this as their silver train will be replaced with another train. Each silver train will go away, one at a time, for a period of 10-20 days, during which time they will be modified to be compliant with Persons with Reduced Mobility (PRM) standards.
Whilst each of these silver trains undergoes this work, another one of our trains will fill in for this timetable. To take advantage of the time that these trains are away for, two of the silver trains will also have periodic heavy-maintenance work carried out whilst the PRM modifications are done. The biggest change for customers will be the installation of priority seating nearest to the carriage doors and installation of digital information screens, see an artist's impression below, which will provide journey updates, calling patterns and other useful details.
After the initial works are carried out, the remaining two silver trains will be sent away carriage by carriage for 5 days at a time for the same heavy-maintenance. Organising the maintenance like this minimises any possible disruption for passengers. For regular silver train passengers, this means that there will be two lots of 5-day periods where one of our silver trains will not be offering Business Zone. There will still be plenty of seating as a standard silver carriage will be added on, but there will, unfortunately, not be a Business Zone offering.
Advice for customers
Customers are advised that whilst this work is carried out there will still be a train service operating. A different train may be filling in for the silver trains that customers on the Kidderminster-London Marylebone line are used to seeing. Additionally, for the two 5-day-periods where one of the silver trains will not have a Business Zone, alternative arrangements can be put in place for passengers requiring assistance. We apologise for any inconvenience this work may cause customers who prefer to travel on our silver trains or in the Business Zone and we look forward to unveiling the improved silver sets to our customers over the winter and New Year.