Class 116 Derby 3-car Suburban DMUs

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Refurbishment

The 116 units were one of the classes selected for refurbishment and this began in December 1975 with the South Wales sets.

Until May 1979 vehicles were turned out in the white/blue stripe "refurbished" livery. After that Blue/grey was used.

Until 1980 Swindon Works did all the transformations, after that Glasgow, Derby and Doncaster joined in but only did a handful.

Internally there was a complete renovation of the internal fittings with tungsten lighting being replaced by fluorescent tubes, reupholstered seating and a modified heating system.

The two character train describer boxes which by this time were out of use were removed and a steel plate was flush welded in it’s place, (on unrefurbished cars the plate, where fitted, just covered the redundant box). The earlier four lamp fronted cars had the lower central lamp removed and the top roof dome mounted lamp was disconnected or was fitted with a blanking plate.

The exhaust pipes were each fitted with exhaust silencers as they rose either side of the gangways to supplement the original underframe mounted silencers, this dramatically reduced but thankfully didn’t completely eliminate the typical DMU rasping engine note, which was most noticeable when pulling away from station stops etc, the trade mark of all unrefurbished units.

Refurbishment did not include the fitting of gangway connections, this work being undertaken separately. Most of the WR sets were already done, those allocated to the LMR, SCR, and ER were treated later, though some refurbished and gangwayed sets were transferred to Tyseley from Cardiff in the late 1970s.

Not all of the class 116 vehicles were refurbished, and a small number remained rail blue well into the 1980s, though by this date most cars whether refurbished or not were at least repainted blue and grey.

Prototype

The first set treated (50858 + 59366 + 50911) featured in an official BR photo album 'Refurbished Class 116 DMU Prototype'. They had a refurbished date of 31/12/77.

 

Production

This official BR photo album 'Refurbished Class 116 DMU Production' featured set C333 outside Swindon Works (51148 presumably with 59445 + 51135). Their refurbishment date was 25/3/77. In the period since the prototype set several other sets had also been treated.

 

Vehicle Details

The table below shows the Works date and the livery applied for each vehicle. Information supplied by Eddie Knorn, extracted from the BR vehicle record cards.