A fourth tunnel boring machine (TBM) has started tunnelling underneath London to join three others building the Northolt Tunnel for HS2.
Northolt Tunnel is 8.4-miles long, and will extend from Victoria Road in Ealing to West Ruislip.
TMB Anne is the eighth TBM to be used on HS2, and with TBM Emily, will be used to bore 3.4 miles from Victoria Road in Ealing, near HS2's Old Oak Common station, to Greenpark Way in Greenford
Anne is the last of four tunnel boring machines being used to constrict Northolt Tunnel, and in line with tunnelling tradition, has been named after a prominent woman, in this case after Lady Anne Byron who lived from 1792 to 1860 and was an educational reformer and philanthropist.
She established Ealing Grove School, England's first co-operative school, in 1834, which provided education for the working classes when education was mainly for the wealthy.
The name Anne was chosen by a public vote among the local community around Ealing.
The launch of TBM Anne is a milestone for the HS2 London Tunnels project.
James Richardson, Managing Director for Skanska Costain STRABAG joint venture
TBMs Sushila and Caroline have been boring the rest of Northolt Tunnel since 2022, and are now over halfway between West Ruislip, on the outskirts of London, and Greenpark Way.
All tunnelling is due to be completed next year when the TBMs will be extracted from the ground through giant shafts at Greenpark Way.
All TBMs have been specially designed for HS2 and the ground through which they will bore, and are being manufactured by Herrenknecht in Germany.
Two TBMs are still to be delivered and these will be used to dig the final HS2 tunnel between Old Oak Common and Euston. Each TBM weighs 1,700 tonnes, is 170 metres long, and has a 9.11m diameter cutterhead.
Instead of clay excavated by the TBMs being removed by lorries, it is removed from the Victoria Road Crossover Box site via a conveyor system to HS2's London Logistics Hub at the Willesden Euroterminal site, where it is sorted before being taken by train for reuse across the UK.
HS2 has reached peak tunnelling activity as we focus on delivering the HS2 route between London and Birmingham. The launch of Anne is the culmination of many years of work for the London Tunnels team and a further triumph in British engineering
Malcolm Codling, HS2's Project Client Director for the London Tunnels
The launch of TBM Anne is a milestone moment in this year of peak activity for the HS2 London Tunnels project. With a quartet of TBMs and over 20 construction sites all making significant progress, we are on course to deliver the high-speed line into central London, creating economic growth and opportunities at every step of the way.
James Richardson, Managing Director for Skanska Costain STRABAG joint venture
As we all know HS2is ALL about London’s rich. The north was never meant to benefit.
Strange that cancelling most of it hurts the North more than London, but there you go.
I fail to see how the section from Birmingham to Manchester amounts to “most of it”