Tunnel boring machine (TBM) Emily will excavate almost half of the 8.4-mile Northolt tunnel.
Having set out on Sunday 26th February 2024, she will bore 3.4 miles under Ealing from Victoria Road crossover box, near HS2’s new Old Oak Common station, to Greenpark Way in Greenford.
London tunnels contractor Skanska Costain Strabag JV (SCS JV) assembled the Herrenknecht TBM below ground at the Victoria Road site. TBM Emily, an earth pressure balance machine designed specifically for soft London clay, weighs 1,700 tonnes and has a 9.11-metre diameter cutterhead.
Malcolm Codling, project client director at HS2 Ltd, said: “We are working at peak construction on HS2, delivering the tunnels which HS2 trains will travel through under London. The preparation to launch TBM Emily has been complex and we remain on schedule to complete the Northolt Tunnel in 2025.”
The Northolt Tunnel is being built in two sections. Two TBMs, named Sushila and Caroline, are already constructing it eastward between West Ruislip and Greenford. Another two – Emily and Anne – are being used to dig the tunnel in the opposite direction from Victoria Road crossover box to Greenford. Anne , the fourth and final Northolt TBM, is scheduled to launch next month.
The quartet of TBMs are all set to complete their journeys in 2025, when they will be lifted out in segments through shafts at Greenpark Way.
The excavated spoil is taken to the London Logistics Hub at Willesden Euro Terminal and sent by rail for reuse at sites in Cambridgeshire, Kent and Rugby.
HS2 is also making progress on preparations for a separate tunnel between Old Oak Common and Euston – the line’s ultimate central London terminus, if current planning works out.
TBM Emily is named after Emily Sophia Taylor, who helped establish the Perivale Maternity Hospital in 1937 before becoming Ealing’s first female mayor in 1938.
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