Features

On site: HS2’s groundbreaking project under way beneath the Chilterns

By 2021-06-08T05:00:00

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Building took a trip to the railway’s single biggest site where work has begun on 16km of tunnels carried out by two 170m long tunnel boring machines and 1,000 workers

The first press visit to HS2’s immense South Portal site since covid-19 restrictions were relaxed did not get off to the smoothest of starts. Seconds after arriving at the headquarters of the project to build not only the £100bn railway’s longest tunnels, but also the UK’s longest rail viaduct, Building was informed that there had been a power cut. 

The cause of the outage was unknown, but a member of HR, while leading reporters through an unlit corridor to a changing room, was quick to make it clear that only the visitors’ induction centre was affected. A few minutes later, as the press were changing into bright orange overalls, the staff member reappeared to insist that the rest of the site was definitely operating as normal, just in case we had misheard.

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