Elizabeth broke in to the eastern end of Liverpool Street Crossrail station, 40 metres beneath the City of London, on the morning of 29th January 2015. The breakthrough is part of Crossrail’s longest tunnel drive, 8.3km from Limmo Peninsula, near Canning Town, to Farringdon. Liverpool Street is one of 10 new Crossrail stations being built.
Elizabeth now has 750 metres of tunnel to bore, before arriving at her final destination at Farringdon station. Elizabeth will finish her tunnel drive and link all Crossrail tunnels for the first time with the big east/west breakthrough at Farringdon in the spring.
Her sister machine Victoria will arrive at Farringdon a few weeks later. On completion, a total of 42km of tunnel will have been bored as part of Europe’s largest infrastructure project. 40km out of 42km have now been constructed.
Crossrail chief executive Andrew Wolstenholme: “We are now on the final countdown to the big east/west breakthrough at Farringdon, which will link all of Crossrail’s tunnels for the first time. This is a phenomenal feat of civil engineering that London can be justifiably proud of. The next challenge is to implement railway systems across the route, keeping the project on time and within budget.”
Joint venture Dragados Sisk is constructing the eastern tunnels between Pudding Mill Lane and Stepney Green, Limmo Peninsula and Farringdon, and Victoria Dock Portal and Limmo. The station tunnels at Liverpool Street have been built by a joint venture comprising Balfour Beatty, BeMo Tunnelling, Morgan Sindall and Vinci Construction.
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