Full Fleet Seating Refurbishment

For this project we were commissioned to support the interior refurbishment of 231 units for Northern Rail, formerly operated by Arriva Rail North. The goal was to bring a large and diverse legacy fleet up to modern standards as part of Northern’s commitment to improve customer experience across the North of England.

The sheer size of the scope of work required simultaneous working across multiple fleets. Over the course of the project, we refurbished 553 carriages and over 50,000 seats, delivering consistent quality and fire compliance across more than ten train classes.

For this project, we:

• Supplied and installed new seat covers, interliners, and foams across a variety of seat designs
• Recovered and refitted seating for multiple DMU and EMU fleets including Class 150, 156, 158, 319, 323, 333, 769 and more
• Designed, trialled, and implemented a material switch mid-project — from flat cloth to moquette
• Managed all compliance testing (to GMRT 2130 iss4), including full fire test documentation and NOBO validation
• Supplied, stripped, and reinstalled cushions via our facilities
• Managed logistics across eight depots using tracked vehicles and bespoke stillages

One of the key challenges was adapting to a major mid-project scope change — switching from flat cloth to moquette across the entire fleet’s seating. This required rapid prototyping, new compliance testing, and reworking existing materials whilst mitigating the impact on project deadlines. Diamond led this transition end-to-end, working closely with Northern Rail to deliver a solution that improved durability, simplified cleaning, and reduced material cost by 25%.