First Class Partnerships directors and consultants have significant experience in operating high speed passenger services in the UK and elsewhere in the European Union spread over a period of many decades. Experience includes launching 225 kph electrified services between London and Scotland in the early 1990s, then improving the performance and utilisation of the same fleet when one of our directors, Mike Tham, was Production Director of Great North Eastern Railway. We undertook feasibility studies in the late 1990s to determine the potential for operating high speed services between Paris and Heathrow Airport, whilst two of our directors were instrumental in launching Hull Trains, Europe's first open access high speed passenger train company in 2000. Since 2001 we have been advising Eurostar on their corporate and operational strategies in optimising the utilisation and performance of services along the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), including project managing the opening of the new London terminus at St Pancras.
We have also advised the Department for Transport in relation to the rolling stock specification and procurement of high speed electrical multiple units to be introduced onto UK domestic services operating on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, including associated depot strategies. In addition our team of engineers has provided technical challenge to Network Rail in developing high speed infrastructure on the West Coast Main Line resulting in infrastructure specification, design and development that saved several billions of pounds sterling from the original Railtrack proposals.
Tony Roche, one of our Directors, was one of the original engineers working on the design and specification of the High Speed Diesel Trains in the 1970s and has continued to advise on future generations of the same type of train, including the rolling stock specification and procurement for their current replacement.
