A giant machine used to bore a tunnel for the new HS2 high-speed railway line is to be dismantled so that it can be repurposed for a new mission.

The giant tunnel boring machine (TBM) Mary Ann had been used to complete a 3.5-mile mission to excavate the first section of the Bromford Tunnel, which links North Warwickshire and Birmingham.

It is now being dismantled by a team of specialist engineers from HS2’s construction partner, Balfour Beatty VINCI.

The first stage in disassembling the 600-tonne TBM was to remove the cutterhead, and then lift it into the Birmingham skyline by a giant 700-tonne crawler crane.

The cutterhead is 8.62 metres in diameter and weighs 120 tonnes. Lifting it out of the 22-metre-deep tunnel portal at Washwood Heath in north Birmingham took place in a 90-minute operation on Friday, 30th May.

During the next three months, a team of 15 engineers will spend the next three months dismantling the 125-metre-long machine, next to the portal in Washwood Heath, before it is returned to the German tunnel boring company Herrenknecht.

TBM Mary Ann took 652 days and nights working underground to excavate the first bore of the Bromford Tunnel. The second section of the Bromford Tunnel is currently being excavated by TBM Elizabeth and is expected to break through later this year.