East Midland Railways has announced the upgrade of the Luton Airport Express fleet. The rail operator says the trains will be upgraded to provide better facilities for commuter, leisure and airport passengers including new 2+2 seating throughout the trains in a mixture of airline style and bay seats, luggage racks, charging points and new passenger information systems.
This is the same announcement that was made in 2019 when they won the franchise but was never implemented. The trains will still suffer from no carriage walk through, as individual trains will still be attached to each other to form 8 carriage units.
At the moment Luton is in the unique position where the trains on the express service are inferior to the standard commuter service that uses 2+2 seating and has full 12 carriage access to all passengers.
There has been no announcement regarding how many years this upgrade will take to complete but using the first announcement made in 2019 we are already at year 5 with not one train yet completed.
Last edited by LTNman; 21st Mar 2024 at 07:52.