New faces are up to CTRL high speed
20 Apr 2006
Two major appointments have been made by southeastern trains to oversee the arrival of high speed domestic rail services on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
David Miller will be programme director tasked with introducing the fleet of 28 Hitachi trains, capable of speeds of 140mph, to serve St Pancras, Ashford and the Kent coast from December 2009. David has worked on many prestigious rail projects, including West Coast Route Modernisation, the new southern railway in Sydney and Hong Kong’s Lantau and airport rail link. He has also held senior posts with Halcrow Rail, and Kellogg, Brown and Root.
He will be supported by Patrick Ropert, who worked for French national operator SNCF in bringing TGV services to the Mediterranean coast, as well as a number of other positions. Southeastern managing director Charles Horton said: “We are very excited at the prospect of operating new high speed domestic rail services over the CTRL, and David and Patrick’s input will be crucial to the planning and introduction of the new service.”
The new trains will be used to run the Olympic ‘Javelin’ services at the 2012 games in London. Southeastern, part of Govia, has just commenced operation of the new six to eight year integrated Kent franchise.
It is expected that the new high speed domestic CTRL train services will cut London to Ashford journey times from 83 to 36 minutes.