Bristol-headquartered law firms Burges Salmon and Osborne Clarke have advised on a £360m deal to buy new, faster trains for the Great Western mainline between London and Devon and Cornwall.
The 29 Hitachi AT300 trains will cut journey times from London to Exeter by up to five minutes and to Penzance by up to14 minutes. They will be more powerful, greener and more efficient than the 40-year-old high speed trains (HST) they will replace in 2018.
Burges Salmon advised client rail franchise firm First Great Western (FGW), which will operate the trains, while Osborne Clarke worked with rolling stock owner Eversholt Rail, which will finance and acquire the trains and lease them, initially, to FGW.
Partner in Burges Salmon’s rail sector group, Brioney Thomas, said: “We are pleased to have advised our long-standing client First Great Western on the procurement of new rolling stock to run on its West of England Routes.
“Our specialist transport lawyers supported FGW in delivering this major project to a rapid timescale, deploying our experience on major procurements, asset finance and rail. Having the right team in place from the outset was a key part of our delivery.”
The Osborne Clarke (OC) team advising Eversholt was led by asset finance partner Clive Smith, who said: “This transaction goes to further establish OC as a ‘go-to’ firm for this kind of work and we congratulate our client on adding this significant fleet of new-generation trains to its rolling stock portfolio.”
The trains, which will have a top speed of 149mpg (240kmh), will be made up of five-carriage and nine-carriage configurations. They will be a bi-mode variant of the Hitachi’s Super Express train, allowing them to run as electric trains between London and Newbury before reverting to diesel power.
They will also have up to 24% more seats compared to the majority of the trains on the route today, creating more than 1,000 additional peak-time seats into and out of Paddington every day.
First Great Western put forward plans for the new trains as part of the deal with the Government, announced in March, to continue to run services between London, the Cotswolds, South Wales and the South West until April 2019.
Hitachi was advised by a team from Addleshaw Goddard, which has offices in Leeds, London and Manchester.
Pictured: Artist’s impression of a Hitachi AT300 in First Great Western livery
