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HS2 joint venture contractor Skanska Costain Strabag (SCS) is preparing to assemble the first tunnel boring machine (TBM) destined for Euston station, following the breakthrough of TBM Lydia into Old Oak Common’s eastern box on January 24.
SCS staff joined media teams to witness the grinding noise of TBM Lydia translate into cracks in the box’s sidewall - and then the spectacle of concrete lumps falling away to reveal the TBM’s rotating cutter head.
Once it had stopped turning, a couple of tunnellers emerged from behind the head to drape flags from it, as staff gathered below for a group photograph.
The picture marked Lydia’s completion of an 853-metre drive to construct HS2’s Atlas Road Logistics Tunnel. It will never actually see HS2 trains, having been dug purely to carry materials to and from the TBMs driving towards Euston.
However, these drives remain in doubt, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak withdrew government funding last autumn in favour of finding private money to complete HS2’s final five miles into Euston and to build a station there.
Atlas Road’s tunnel will feed concrete segments (over 56,000, which Strabag plans to make in Hartlepool) to the two TBMs, and carry away excavated clay via a railhead at Willesden Europort.
Having the tunnel reduces the number of lorries needed to service the Euston tunnels. It also allows HS2 to construct a roof over Old Oak Common’s station box (once the TBM cutter heads have been craned into the box) and to continue work above ground, which includes building the platforms that will serve Elizabeth line and Great Western Railway services.
HS2 Ltd Project Client Director Malcolm Codling said the breakthrough “takes us closer along our journey to bring HS2 into central London at Euston”.
SCS Managing Director James Richardson echoed this, adding: “The tunnel supports our continued commitment to reducing costs and carbon by removing one million lorry journeys off London’s roads.” Elsewhere on HS2’s vast and complex Old Oak Common (OOC) site, the foundations are going in for the surface station for Great Western Main Line services.
Muck continues to emerge from OOC’s east and west boxes - internal site lorries take this spoil to a conveyer that carries it to Willesden for onward transport and disposal.
