London Underground D78 Stock - Refurbishment

Refurbishment

The mid-life refurbishment of the D stock was the first to be carried out under the PPP, by Metronet, and was delayed until contract negotiations were completed. A prototype unit (three cars only) was prepared by London Underground's Train Modification Unit (TMU) at Acton Depot in 2001. This had some differences from the eventual refurbishment detail, but has now been brought up to the standard of the rest of the fleet. The refurbishment programme began in summer 2005 with the first two units coming into service that June. The refurbishment consisted of:

• applying the LU livery on the outside
• a restyling of the interiors in green and white
• maple flooring replaced with rubber
• adding end-of-car windows
• new grab bars instead of hanging straps (bobbles on springs)
• covering over of door buttons
• dot matrix indicators showing the station and destination on the inside of carriages and on the front and sides of trains
• audio passenger information system guided by GPS and odometer
• flip seat/disabled multi purpose area
• air conditioning to driver's cab
• anti-vandal paint and window film
• CCTV

It is the first Underground stock to have electronic side-of-carriage information displays, although some pre-war trains had slot-in or reversible destination or non-stopping plates.

On 15 February 2008, the final remaining "unpainted" train was taken out of service to be refurbished. The train (comprising units 7534 west to 7115 east) was the very last unpainted passenger train on the entire London Underground. Its run could have extended into the weekend, but due to planned weekend engineering works on the District line it was taken out on Friday at the end of operations. The unit left Ealing for its refurbishment on 28 February 2008. Appropriately, the very last silver train on the London Underground ran on the line which first introduced unpainted trains in 1952.