As the construction of the new HS2 picks up more and more speed with new contracts announced almost every week (a detailed blog on these is coming shortly), the tiny bunch of anti HS2 protesters lurch from one disasterous defeat to another as their numbers continue to dwindle due to a combination of arrests, injunctions and the fact the schools and colleges have gone back. Oh, and the weather! The ‘fair-weather’ anarchists like to pose and posture to their friends on social media in the sunshine – but muddy fields, cold mornings and heavy rain really aren’t their thing.

Nowhere has this become more obvious than the ongoing (but soon to end) eviction at Jones’ Hill wood in Aylesbury Vale. The protesters had been left alone in the woods for several months as they weren’t in anyone’s way. Lulled into a false sense of security they built several tree houses and boasted how they would ‘hold’ the wood against HS2 as the wood was the inspiration for a Roald Dahl story, “Fantastic Mr Fox”. There was only one problem. None of it had any basis in fact!

The Roald Dahl museum – who are the real authorities on the man – say the wood that inspired the story is another one that’s nowhere near HS2!

The protesters boasts were about ‘holding’ the woods were just as baseless. Within 48 hours of moving in the bailiffs had evicted the majority of the tree houses and established that the claim of protesters in tunnels was just another empty boast.

Worse was to come, the protesters reinforcements failed to arrive, despite the media coverage the evictions received. There was one, Daniel Hooper, better known as ‘swampy’, who gained minor celebrity status during the roads protests of the 1990s. There’s only one problem. He failed then – and he’s failed now…

Meanwhile, another small protest camp containing just four people on the Rugby Rd near Cubbington was evicted with alacrity, whittling down the protesters eight camps down to six. As usual, HS2 Rebellion made all the usual ridiculous accusations about violence towards the protesters – all of whom were seen to be in rude health shortly after when they forgot they’d meant to have been beaten up. Funny, that!

This number will fall even further in the next few months – although some of the camps (like Crackley) are already redundant as the work they were trying to stop has already happened! Other camps will linger on as they’re on private land and not obstructing building HS2 in the slightest.

As the protests have failed to actually stop anything the protesters have little left to do but spread massive misinformation about the alleged ‘destruction’ HS2’s doing to wildlife reserves like Calvert. Sadly for them, this keeps getting exposed for what it is – complete bollocks. Here’s an example. Someone flew their drone over the work at Calvert Jubilee reserve a few days ago and stuck the resulting video on Youtube. .

It’s painfully obvious to anyone with an open mind that the reserve is hardly touched, with work concentrated on clearing vegetation on the route of the old railways, including the former Great Central.

As we’re now into autumn and the wildlife nesting season’s behind us HS2 is ramping up the speed of the vegetation clearance work that it needs to do before major construction starts. This means there’s a huge number of active sites and a tiny bunch of protesters to go round. ‘High profile’ events like the eviction of Jones’ Hill Woods drag them in as they waste their time trying to stop the inevitable – meaning work at other sites is undisturbed. It’s farcical to listen to the claims some of them make on social media about ‘winning’ but this is the post-truth era and first major infrastructure project that’s been conducted in the new media age. I’m sure there’ll be a fascinating thesis for a student in all this next year!

In my next blog I’ll compile a list of the HS2 contracts that have been awarded since my last update. They total hundreds of millions of pounds, creating thousands of UK jobs from Somerset to Teesside.

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I thought it was about time that I wrote another blog about HS2 as, finally, after years of arguments. delays and uncertainty, the project is very much underway.  After 11 years of planning and preparation, HS2 finally received ‘Notice to Proceed’ in April. Now, even seasoned observers like myself find it hard to keep track of progress as the speed and scale of events means it feels like there’s a new announcement on progress every week – despite the Covid hiccup. It’s easy to miss things, after all, this is a massive project that’s around 124 miles long and that contains dozens and dozens of worksites (large and small) covering a whole range of activities. There’s archeological surveys, utilities to divert, vegetation clearance, mitigation works, the establishment of site compounds as well as some major civil engineering ready for the launch of tunnel boring machines of the construction of viaducts and bridges.

What I’m going to do in this blog is give an overview of what’s happening where, as well as some of the major announcements that have taken place in the past few months. If you want to find details of work being carried on in specific areas, HS2 Ltd have an excellent website called ‘HS2 – in your area’ which keeps people along the route up to date. You can find it here. This blog is not an exhaustive list. I’m sure there will be some things I’ve missed because of the sheer size of the project.

Firstly, let’s look at some of the major announcements.

2nd July. The contract for the overhead power lines on phase 1 and 2 a to Crewe is announced.

Worth around £300 million the system will cover 589 single track kilometres, including 62 viaducts, 293 bridges and 15 tunnels

24th June. Birmingham Curzon St station construction shortlist announced. 

The following companies were shortlisted for the contract to build the £570m contract to build the station.

BAM Ferrovial (a joint venture consisting of BAM Nuttall Ltd and Ferrovial Construction (UK) Limited)

Laing O’Rourke Construction Limited

Mace Dragados (a joint venture consisting of Mace Limited and Dragados S.A. UK Branch)

The station recently became the first HS2 station to gain planning approval. It’ll be net zero carbon in operation and adopt the latest eco-friendly design and sustainable technologies, including capturing rainwater and utilising sustainable power generation, with over 2,800m2 of solar panels located on platform canopies.

22nd June. Telecoms supply contract announced. 

The winner of the contract – worth around £300m – will be responsible for the design, manufacture, supply, installation, safety authorisation, testing, commissioning and initial maintenance of the operational telecommunication systems and the route wide security systems on Phase One and 2a, between London and Crewe.
The scope of the work includes 2,760 km of fibre optic cabling, 140 trackside cabinets, dozens of equipment cabins and radio coverage across 230km.

11th June. Pictures of the massive site where the Chiltern Tunnel boring machines will be launched from were released. 

Anyone thinking that work so far has been small beer about grubbing up a few hedgerows or diverting a few water mains were in for a shock when these pictures were released. The site at South Heath in Buckinghamshire is massive (136 acres) – but it’s escaped attention because protesters have ignored it so haven’t drawn attention to it. Hardly surprising at it shows just how ineffective they’ve been.

The two TBM’s that will be launched from the site in 2021 are currently under construction in Germany.

28th May. Cleveland Bridge Co supply girders for the first major HS2 bridges at the M42.

Another solid good news story as a British company supply pre-assembled steel bridge sections.

26th May. Details of the Chiltern Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) under construction in Germany are released. 

Two of these state of the art machines are being built by Herrenknecht in Germany. 170m in length and weighing around 2000 tonnes apiece, the machines will run virtually non-stop for three and a half years.

19th May. Old Oak Common station gains planning approval. 

Set to be the largest new railways station ever built in the UK, The station will have 14 platforms with a mix of six high speed and eight conventional service platforms. Expected to be used by around 250,000 passengers each day it’s set to become one of the busiest railway stations in the country when it opens.

15th May. The signalling contract is announced. 

The contract covers the design and build of the signalling systems between London, Birmingham and Crewe and up to 25 years of technical support.

4th May. Track systems contract is announced. 

The search is on for specialist contractors to deliver around 280km of state-of-the-art high speed track between London, Birmingham and Crewe – although Contracts covering rail, switches and crossings and pre-cast slab track systems will be awarded separately – with the track systems suppliers coordinating the design and installation.

1st May. Curzon St is the first HS2 station to gain planning approval.

Three planning applications for the new station and the surrounding landscaping were approved by the Council’s planning committee on 23 April, with the Council’s report concluding the station design “is truly world class”.

On the same day, it’s announced that…

Birmingham Interchange becomes the first railway station globally to achieve the BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ certification – a measure of sustainability for new and refurbished buildings – putting it in the top 1% of buildings in the UK for eco-friendly credentials.

Of course, work continues at both the Curzon St station site in Birmingham and at London Euston and the surrounding streets where demolition of many old properties that have to be removed to make way for the new station has already been completed. Here’s a excellent time-lapse video from Network Rail showing the demolition of the old Western ramp up to the parcels deck atop the station.

Whilst the big announcements catch the eye there’s continual progress on the ground as the project gathers pace towards its biggest and busiest period which will be between  2024-25. That said, there’s plenty to look forward to in the next couple of years. The first tunnel boring machine is set to be launched later this year.

Contractor BBV plans to start creating the tunnel under Long Itchington Wood in Warwickshire at the end of 2020.  This includes the creation of a compound and upgrading Ridgeway Lane to support the future transportation of the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). In autumn, the TBM will be delivered to the Welsh Road main compound via the upgraded Ridgeway Lane. It will be transported in parts and assembled on site.
Following assembly of the TBM, tunnelling will start in December 2020. BBV will bore two tunnels under the wood, emerging near the A452 and Dallas Burston Polo Club. Once completed the TBM will be removed from site.

So, as you can see, there’s a huge amount going on, despite the temporary hiatus caused by Covid. It’s not all about Phase 1 and 2a either. On the 23rd June the DfT issued new safeguarding instructions for Phase 2b whilst on the 26th outline details were revealed of the HS2 route wide ground investigation’s programme for phase two – a contract estimated to be worth up £250 million and delivered in up to 8 years.

And what of the protests and opposition to the project? It’s generated a lot of hot air and some media attention but achieved nothing. Not a single HS2 worksite has suffered serious disruption or been closed down for more than a day – despite the claims to the contrary. The half dozen protest camps are tiny with many under the constant threat of eviction. One has to wonder how the handful of protesters think they can stop the largest construction project in Europe when they can’t even stop themselves being evicted! Extinction Rebellion did organise a walk along the route from Birmingham to London but this only attracted a few dozen people. The irony was that whilst they were wasting show-leather on this futile exercise they weren’t able to disrupt any work on the HS2 sites! Such disruption have reached farcical levels, such as their last stunt where a solitary protester glued his hands together through an unused gate on the Denham work site. The level of disruption he caused for the couple of hours before he was removed was zero! Some like to paint the protesters as ‘heros’. Anyone who’s watched their antics on social media knows the truth about their (often) abusive behavior, assaults on HS2 staff and destructive antics. You can read about the whole sorry saga around Harvil Rd in this statement which was attached as evidence to back up the latest High Court Injunction.

It’s the same with the Crackley ‘protection’ camp. Whilst they did cause disruption, they didn’t stop any work from being completed and the camp is now pretty much redundant as the last few trees that need to be removed to make way for HS2 will be cleared at the end of the nesting season.

Attempts to disrupt HS2 in the courts have also failed. Hero Grainger Taylor’s attempt at a judicial review about the Camden cutting was rejected by judges on the 5th June, with no realistic chance of an appeal. (link).

‘Environmentalist’ Chris Packham is in court again this next week when judges will hear his crowdfunded appeal on the 8th July. Expect this to end in another humiliation as nothing substantive has changed. Here’s what the judges said last time.

No doubt I’ll be blogging about this after the event!

Apart from Extinction Rebellion’s ineffective efforts there’s nothing going on. Campaign  group (and I use that term very loosely indeed) StopHs2 are moribund and irrelevant with nothing going on apart from ‘rent a quote’ Rukin giving the occasional pointless, blustering interview. With the Government desperate to get the economy back on track and inject some life into it HS2 is needed more than ever – a point those opposed to the project refuse to grasp.

As soon as restrictions on visits are relaxed I’m expecting to be able to bring you some updates from worksites along the route so watch this space as this exciting project  continues to gather momentum in scope and scale.

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