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The one-mile Long Itchington Wood tunnel will be the first will be the first HS2 tunnel to be completed on the project.
Tunnel boring machine (TBM) Dorothy, one of 10 TBMS on the HS2 project between London and Birmingham, is expected to break through her first bore at the south portal in spring 2022. She will then be disassembled and taken back to the north portal to dig the second bore, which is due to be completed in early 2023.
Dorothy weighs 2,000 tonnes and is 125 metres long. She will remove 250,000 cubic metres of mudstone and soil, which will be transported to an on-site slurry treatment plant where material is separated before being reused on embankments and landscaping along the route.
Balfour Beatty Vinci managing director Michael Dyke said: “Today represents a significant milestone, culminating months of hard work and representing a vitally important moment in the delivery of Britain’s new high-speed railway line. As Dorothy, our cutting-edge tunnel boring machine, sets off on her one-mile journey, our work across the northern section of HS2 continues to progress at pace.”
Dorothy is named after Dorothy Hodgkin, who in 1964 became the first British woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her discoveries included confirming the structure of penicillin, and her work with insulin paved the way for it to be used on a large scale for treatment of diabetes. She died in 1994 in Shipston-on-Stour in Warwickshire.
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