Bespoke Engineering Solutions

We were delighted to see an AV Birch engineering solution still in use years after development.

The Alstom Group recently published a press release and film documenting the completion of the UK’s biggest ever train fleet upgrade – a £117 million refurbishment program of Avanti West Coast’s Class 390 Pendolino trains.

Director at AV Birch, Graham Clark recalls;

“We were tasked to come up with a method of removing old train seats from inside a train safely down onto the depot floor, given that there are sometimes hundreds of seats to refurbish this was a difficult back breaking task for the engineers .

Having assessed the task it became apparent that making a small, stable lightweight trolley so that the seats could be unbolted from their current position onto a trolley and down through the very narrow train isle maneuvering through obstacles was going to be a huge benefit , once at the train door which was roughly 1500 mm above ground we manufactured a scissor lift and ramp to enable the safe rolling off of the seats to ground level .  

The trolleys had to be lightweight, easily steerable, and also be able to cope with seats that were both left and right handed. We made everything from aluminum so that it could be easily lifted into place by engineers, and ensured everything was easy to assemble and store.”

When we saw the film, we were pleased to see the seat trolley we developed for this purpose, many years ago, in action. AV Birch take great pride in providing quality workmanship and we can definitely say that is the case here.

Part of the refurbishment involved replacing over 25,000 seats so they certainly needed those trollies!

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