Back at the start of March, CrossCountry launched the first of its refurbished class 170s into service and, some five months later, I finally had the opportunity to take a ride on one. At the time of my journey at the start of August, only 170101, 170112 and 170113 had been refurbished and re-entered service, so hunting one of them down was a bit of a challenge. However, with the help of Real Time Trains, I managed to find 170101 on a Birmingham New Street to Stansted Airport service and so took a ride a couple of stops east to Nuneaton to try it out.
Designed and built by what was then Adtranz in Derby (later Bombardier and now Alstom), the class 170 is a second-generation Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) that replaced a range of earlier DMUs on mostly regional and long-distance services. Since the late 1990s they have operated the length and breadth of Great Britain, from Inverness to Southampton, Ipswich to Cardiff. With 139 sets originally built, CrossCountry now operates 29 of these on their regional routes from Birmingham New Street to Leicester, Nottingham, Stansted Airport and South Wales. In total 80 carriages will be refurbished at Arriva TrainCare’s Crewe depot, with the final unit being expected to be completed by 2028.
With 170101 arriving into Birmingham New Street on a service from Leicester the most immediately noticeable change from the refurb is the exterior paint job. Whilst the core silver/grey remains, the traditional CrossCountry maroon is gone, with the new livery featuring what can best be described as ‘strawberries and cream’ with pink ends, a huge white stylised ‘X’ and cream end passenger doors. Stepping onboard, the entire interior has been repainted and refurbished, with new carpets, seats and tables, although thankfully the ‘warm’ interior lighting remains and hasn’t been replaced by the ‘harsh’ lighting you get on new trains.
Whilst the new seats are more streamlined than the bulky pre-refurb ones, they are still pretty comfortable and have the advantage of allowing more legroom. The ‘airline style’ seats have larger seat back tables than before, and for each pair of seats there is a standard socket, a USB-A and a USB-C located down by your knees on the back of the seats in front. For the seats located around ‘full-sized’ tables, the tables are also bigger, and the sockets can be found on top of the table next to the window. Surprisingly though, the tables don’t feature the wireless charging that is becoming more common across modern fleets, although this may be due to the limitations of the 25+ year old fleet.
The interior also features improved passenger information screens, allowing more information to be provided, whilst they are also much clearer from the other end of the carriage. The refurbishment has also seen the removal of the first-class seating areas, with the refurbished units now being 100% standard class, although this doesn’t increase overall seating capacity as the wheelchair and bicycle spaces have now been separated from the formerly combined area. CrossCountry’s traditional maroon colour scheme remains in the seat moquette, with most seats featuring this colour scheme, although for some reason the former first-class seating area behind the cab has a green moquette.
Prior to the refurbishment CrossCountry’s class 170s were one of my preferred trains to travel on due to the comfort they provided, and I’ve got to say I’m impressed with the refurb. Whilst the interior has been modernised and improved, it is still a pleasant environment with comfortable seats, and I look forward to many more journeys onboard between Peterborough and Birmingham. As for the exterior paint job, personally the jury is still out, although ultimately it doesn’t matter. At the time of writing this at the end of August 2025, its still just the three refurbished sets in service, although 170103, the fourth to be refurbished is expected to be released from Crewe soon.
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