Eversholt Rail’s modified Class 321 has begun transporting passengers on the Greater Anglia network.
The Class 321 Demonstrator, which was unveiled in October, was launched at Liverpool Street Station this week.
Abellio Greater Anglia will operate the four-car unit for the next 12 months between Southend, Chelmsford, Braintree, Colchester, Clacton, Harwich and Ipswich, in which time it is hoping to gather feedback from passengers on its refurbished interior.
The train is made up of two ‘suburban’ cars and two ‘metro’ cars, which feature 3+2 and 2+2 seating configurations respectively.
Everything from new LED lighting to a wheelchair accessible toilet have been installed on the vehicle as part of a programme led by Eversholt to explore ways of extending the life of the Class 321.
Mary Kenny, chief executive of Eversholt Rail, said: “We hope as many people as possible travel on the Demonstrator and give us feedback on the new features and the overall experience, to help us to improve the trains for passengers in the future.”
So if this Demonstrator train does work for Passengers and Passenger would love to these Class 321’s to be refurbished then it would be brilliant to see these Class 321’s to be refurbished. Its time for these trains to be refurbished. Eversholt Rail have done a brilliant job making this Class 321448 as a Demonstration train for passengers to experience the reliability and soon the Class 321’s would be transformed from a horrible nasty Dusty Commuter train to a more advanced refurbished Air-Conditioned Commuter train for Abellio Greater Anglia.
I think these Class 321’s deserve to be refurbished not only for Abellio Greater Anglia but also for First Capital Connect, Northern and London Midland which they have the Class 321’s would follow on as Abellio Greater Anglia will have their 94x Class 321’s to be refurbished. 321448 is just an demonstration train but soon all of the Class 321’s will be refurbished. Even Class 320’s, 322’s and 456’s would also be refurbished in the future.