I travel out of Kettering quite a lot and I prefer the Connect service for the extra space when the units are coupled when compared to a 5-car meridian on a Nottingham stopper. Honestly, I am at the point where all I want is a deep clean of the units and that will be good for me, maybe some new purple seat covers. I give up on ever having hope of a new interior. EMR seems not to want to do so with any of their trains so why would it change? They have recently committed to a refurbishment at some point (who knows what year that will be!) but I can't see them doing more than as previously said, new seat covers and a deep cleaning most likely.
I think the other reason for not refurbishing them is that the Connect service would probably attract the same number of people regardless of interior condition; so a refurbishment would be money spent with little or no resulting financial gain.
Also, in terms of the commitment to 360 refurbishment (I think Will Rogers said something to Modern Railways along the lines of “it’s not if, it’s when”), I refuse to believe a thing until I actually see it or at the very least we know a firm contract has been signed. Since EMR was born, promise after promise has been reneged on (admittedly, quite often due to factors out of their control) and I doubt a 360 refurbishment will now take place - as things stand, loco-hauled 360 services to Nottingham are looking more likely than a refurbishment!
There have been good things about EMR, don’t get me wrong - they generally do well at actually running services (think to Avanti and TPE for comparison!), marketing is very good & efficient and what we have seen of the 810s thus far is living up to expectations - however the future of the East Midlands rail network, especially on the non-IC side, isn’t looking good from a passenger experience, comfort and convenience point of view.
