D Stock

The London Underground D78 Stock was a type of sub-surface rolling stock which operated on the District line of the London Underground, except on the Wimbledon to Edgware Road service. Following the withdrawal of the C Stock in June 2014, these were the oldest subsurface trains in service on the London Underground. The first units were withdrawn in January 2015 with the last withdrawn on 21 April 2017 and fuly replaced by the S Stock.

Withdrawal and a New Lease of Life
Withdrawals commenced on 19 January 2015 when the first full 6-car train, formed of units 7510 and 7058, was withdrawn from service at Ealing Common Depot and loaded onto trucks for Long Marston for the driving motors to be converted into 230s and the other cars to be either scrapped or stored for future use. The last train, formed of units 7007 and 7032, ran on 21 April 2017.undefined

A farewell heritage tour took place on 7 May 2017 operated by units 7007+7032.

In February 2016, four redundant D78 cars were used by the emergency services in a mock tube accident staged at Littlebrook Power Station.

In 2014, Vivarail purchased 156 Driving Motor cars and 70 trailing vehicles for conversion to diesel-electric multiple units.undefined It is proposed to run 75 units of two or three cars per unit. They will become known as class 230 under TOPS.undefined

A prototype was produced for testing and accreditation in August 2015, with introduction to service in 2016. The first Class 230 service to carry passengers operate on 19 July 2017 when a unit is used to operate a shuttle service from Honeybourne to the Rail Live exhibition at the Quinton Rail Technology Centre.

The first customer for production Class 230 units was West Midlands Trains, which ordered three 2-car DMUs in October 2017. Subsequently, Transport for Wales ordered a total of five 3-car sets, to be built as BMMUs, in June 2018.