My last update was back on October 7th, so as so much has been happening recently I though it time for update No 3. Here’s a (by no means exhaustive) round up of news from the past 6 weeks.
On the 7th October HS2 Ltd signed the contract for the first 2 of the Tunnel Boring Machines that will be boring beneath Greater London. These tunnels will be twin bored. At 13 miles each way, and with a combined total of 26 miles, HS2’s London tunnel’s will be the same length as Crossrail.
These machines are part of a package of 10 TBMs purchased to construct the 64 miles of tunnelling along the HS2 route between the West Midlands and London.
The (TBMs) are being built by world leading manufacturer Herrenknecht and will be delivered to the site in the UK by the end of 2021. They’re being designed and manufactured specifically for the London clay and chalk ground conditions they’ll be used in.
These first two London TBMs will be launched from a portal at West Ruislip and will travel 5 miles east, creating the western section of the Northolt Tunnel. Once they arrive at Green Park Way in Greenford the machines will be extracted from the ground and the site will then be used as a vent shaft. The 8.4 mile tunnel will be completed with a 3.4 mile tunnel drive from Old Oak Common using two further TBMs which are yet to be procured. A second tunnel between Euston and Old Oak Common will complete the remaining 4.5 miles of London tunnel between the two HS2 stations.
Once the first new TBMs have been built, they will be transported by sea before being delivered to site at the end of 2021. Once assembled, they will begin the tunnel drive from mid 2022, until completion at the beginning of 2024.
On the 14th October details of a 5 year study into geology along the HS2 route was announced in a partnership with Bath University and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) in a major study of the geology beneath the first phase of Britain’s new high speed railway between the West Midlands and London. You can read the full details here.
A few days later on the 19th October the designs for the HS2 viaducts at Edgcote (515m long) and Lower Thorpe (210m long) in Northamptonshire were unveiled, along with details of major new wildlife sites and environmental mitigation that will be created. Full detail are here.
Over the weekend of the 24-25th October another engineering milestone was celebrated when a 45 metre, 914 tonne modular bridge was moved into place over the M42 motorway in just 45 minutes! Just like last time, the motorway reopened 24 hours ahead of schedule. More here.
On the 27th October HS2 revealed updated designs for the Canterbury Works vent shaft headhouse and compound, in South Kilburn, London. It will be one of four structures that will be built to provide ventilation and emergency access to the high speed rail line for the 4.5mile long Euston Tunnel between Euston and Old Oak Common. More Here.
Just 3 days later, the final design for the Little Missenden vent shaft headhouse was revealed. This will provide ventilation and emergency access to the high-speed railway’s 10 mile-long Chilterns tunnel below. The headhouse is one of four that will be built above a vent shafts leading down to the high speed rail tunnel and is similar in style to the HS2 headhouse at Chalfont St Peter announced earlier this year. More here.
The pace of announcements in November didn’t slack off. There was a slew of news on virtual Meet the Contractor events, substantial grants to community funds and innovative robot technology for the TBMs as well as gold awards for sustainability.
Then, on the 23rd November, the 4 day virtual ‘Meet the contractor’ event went live, with around £12bn worth of contract opportunities. Needless to say, there’s been a lot of interest. You can find out more here.
On the same day HS2 issued an invitation to tender to five bidders in the running to design, deliver and maintain almost 300 state-of-the-art lifts and escalators for HS2’s four major new stations. The contract is divided into two separate packages for lifts worth up to £267m and escalators worth up to £198m. Shortlisted bidders are;
- Fujitec UK Ltd
- Kone Plc
- Otis Ltd
- Schindler Ltd
- Thyssenkrupp Elevator UK Ltd
There’s more details here.
The political front hasn’t been forgotten either. Yesterday the Government published a statement of reasons command paper for the High-Speed Rail (West Midlands to Crewe) Bill. The command paper is titled the ‘Government overview of the case for HS2 Phase 2a and its environmental impacts – Update for the House of Lords’. This is required by Parliamentary Standing Order 83A(9) to assist the House during the third reading of the High-Speed Rail (West Midlands to Crewe) Bill. This document summarises the work that has already been done to assess, control and mitigate the environmental impacts of HS2 Phase 2a, and explains why the government continues to take the view that the HS2 Phase 2a project is worthy of its support.
The 24th was also the day HS2 Ltd invited contractors to bid for first major civils work north of the West Midlands, on the phase 2a route to Crewe. Known as ‘Early Civils Work – Package 2’ (ECW2), the new £50m programme includes a range of enabling works designed to reduce disruption during the main build stage of the project. This includes major highways works and associated utility diversions as well as a range of environmental and other surveys along the 58km route. In a separate deal was a detailed programme of ground investigation along the 2a route, with Hs2 confirming that the latest package – worth £25-30m – has been awarded to Balfour Beatty. More here.
Last on the list is today’s announcement that HS2 and the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) have agreed to work together to deliver the utility diversions required to enable the planned Birmingham Eastside extension to serve the new HS2 Curzon Street Station on its proposed route to Digbeth. Details here.
Phew! I really do need to do these updates more often! As you can see, there’s a huge amount going on at the moment – and that’s without other work on the ground, such as the continued arrival of the Chiltern Tunnel Boring machines from Germany, whose components continue to be shipped in and moved to sites on the Phase 1 route.
There’s also utilities work still happening, with National Power having successfully installed a bridge at Denham (despite the actions of the tiny protest camp in the area) ready to begin installing the new HV pylons that will replace the old route. Away from the Chilterns and Warwickshire work is picking up the pace in Staffordshire, where clearance of trees and scrub has picked up the pace. You can find a detailed look at what’s happening up and down the HS2 route by taking a look at the excellent ‘HS2 in your area’ website.
Needless to say, the protests against HS2 have had no significant effect and are well past their peak due to a combination of factors. They never managed to attract large numbers of people and many of the real activists have rendered themselves useless by getting arrested and being subject to bail conditions/injunctions. Nowadays protests are very small scale and tend to involve one or two people climbing on to lorries before being nicked by the police and carted off to the local cop-shop. The minor delays they cause to HS2 work is out of proportion to the inconvenience they cause to locals – who’re getting increasingly unhappy with what they see as a waste of everyone’s time! As protesters seem to be spending more time in court than they do trying to stop HS2 I can only see one way this is going…
Hopefully, once the latest ‘lockdown’ has eased and we know what the new rules are I’ll be able to begin bringing you bulletins from events along the route. In the meantime, I’ll do another update in December. Watch this space…
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Thank you!
Paul Bigland 
Thanks once again for an excellent summary of progress to date. Be aware that many of us understand the amount of time you take to draw together the details and appreciate you taking the time and effort to provide this detail.
Thanks! They are rather time-consuming but I think it’s worth it to draw everything together in order to show just what progress is being made on HS2.
Always good to see at least part of the money spent of HS2’s army of PR people is being used to write your blog. Should you not be using a picture of an industrial waste land as your header, instead of the corner of the Peak District. or is this the hypocracy of being out of range?
Thanks you for showing why the anti-HS2 campaign has been such an unmitigated disaster. You exist in your own little bubble, reciting the same old propaganda to yourselves. You simply can’t grasp that at lot of intelligent and informed people support HS2 as they understand why it’s needed. Instead you try to dismiss any and all of them as ‘vested interests’. You do realise that doesn’t wash, don’t you? The only people you kid with this nonsense are yourselves. Oh, and for your information, you couldn’t even get the location of the header picture right! It’s of Seathwaite in the Lake District – the wettest place in England!
I wonder where the occupants of Denham will go now that the bridge they’ve strived to stop has gone in. I imagine it’ll become another Crackley, with more empty tents than people.
Indeed. I see that Larch Maxey was filming at the Harvil Rd camp the other day, appealing for people to turn up and clean it up now that it’s almost abandoned – and maybe to hang around for a day – not to stop HS2 (as they don’t stand a chance) but to waste their time recording movements in and out of the HS2 site! I suspect we’ll see the size of the remaining ‘protection’ camps shrink even further over the next month or two. Especially as – like you’ve pointed out – the work they were trying to stop is now well under way!
Please don’t think the Stop HS2 protestors have gone away. If you came far enough north you would find us! You are in your own little world thinking we don’t exist but we do and are very active but struggle to get media attention as we are constantly blocked! I wonder why?! You thing the eastern leg is a done deal but it is not. We will fight it to the bitter end!
This is actually quite funny! You can bluster all you like, but you can’t stop HS2. I’m assuming you’re talking about Staffordshire? What have you actually stopped? Nothing. The truth is, you’re a tiny group of people in isolated little groups trying to stop the biggest civil engineering project in Europe. You’re like a flea on a rhino. What you describe as ‘very active’ is hilarious! A bloke up a tree? A handful of people making a nuisance of themselves but getting nowhere? Get real.
No doubt Lynda thinks they don’t get any notice from the media due to a D Notice being issued or the like. Note that D Notices are now called DSMA Notices are requests and are not obligatory and only apply to National Security issues.
The answer is actually far simpler, it’s because the Stop HS2 narrative has nothing of substance to offer and any sane journalist steers well clear.
They speak to so many people opposed to HS2 in their Facebook and Whatsapp groups that they think they must be a majority and are a hot political issue.
Yet the petitions they rabidly share rarely go over 50k and have yet to exceed 60k, in a country of 66 million. They’re small potatoes.
“Needless to say, the protests against HS2 have had no significant effect and are well past their peak due to a combination of factors.”
Sorry, I must say this is highly inaccurate. HS2’s own board minutes note ‘schedule disruption’, and they have a Crises Management Team that meets regularly to discuss the fallout from public opposition to the project.
I know it’s a private blog and everything but I understand you’ve done some professional journalism, so a bit disturbing that you’re presenting opinion as fact here when HS2’s own people would disagree with you.
If you’d like to peruse the board minutes, you can do so here. More recent board meetings suggest that impacts from public opposition have only increased over the course of the year.
The reality on the ground proves the truth of my words. What have the protests achieved? Nothing. Have they stopped HS2? No. Have they closed down a single worksite? No. Did they stop the Tunnel Boring Machines arriving? No. Did they prevent National Power building its bridge at Denham? No. Did they stop tree felling at Crackley, Cubbington (or anywhere else?) No. As for ‘public opposition’ – that’s a fantasy. A few people grumbling on social media is no real opposition to anything. You can kid yourselves all you like, but the truth is these protests have dwindled in size since the summer and they continue to shrink.