Northern Class 170’s digital transformation

The Northern Class 170 fleet, maintained by the team at Hull Botanic Gardens, has led the way in the implementation of maintenance innovation.

In 2024 Northern, in partnership with Porterbrook and Instrumentel (a Unipart company), completed a successful installation programme of powertrain RCM system on their fleet.

Since then, we have been working collaboratively together to drive the benefits of this new technology, ensuring a safer and more reliable railway for passengers.

Building on this success in 2025, we are now working together to drive the same benefits for other Class 170 operators around the country.

The fleet’s performance has gone from 3-5k Mp701D in early 2025 to nearly 10k Mp701D in March 2026

Among many benefits, the installation of RCM on Northern’s Class 170 fleet has led to:

Improved reliability

Performance has significantly improved for the fleet going from 3-5k Mp701D in early 2025 to nearly 10k Mp701D in March 2026

Efficiency savings

Moving several maintenance tasks to a condition-based approach has saved Northern over 1,800 labour hours per year, freeing up this time for focus to shift onto other critical areas

Encouraging sustainable practices

Remote condition monitoring helps us to better understand and improve our impact on the environment through analytics to locate and quantify excessive engine idling on the Northern network

Improving customer satisfaction

The transformation project has also directly impacted the passenger experience through a 13% reduction in delay minutes and a 29% reduction in cancellations

Improving safety

Having continual monitoring of key powertrain systems has enabled real time fault identification, reducing the likelihood of catastrophic engine failures