TBMs will be delivered to UK ahead of job beginning in 2025 as funding looks set to be freed up now local elections have wrapped up
The tunnel boring machines needed to start tunnelling work from Old Oak Common station to the mothballed Euston station are expected to be delivered to the UK in the coming weeks.
The equipment has been made in Germany and is undergoing its final trials before being shipped across to the HS2 site.
A team featuring Costain, Skanska and Austrian firm Strabag has begun work to tunnel the route from West Ruislip to Old Oak Common – which is where HS2 trains will terminate in the capital when the railway first opens.
But the same London tunnels team, officially called SCS, is expected to start the tunnel drive to Euston in 2025.
The current funding arrangement for HS2 at Euston runs out next spring, two years after the scheme was halted, but funding for the tunnelling work is set to be freed up now the local elections are out of the way.
Earlier this year, Building revealed Costain chief executive Alex Vaughan said the SCS team had been told work will start next year and at the time a HS2 spokesperson confirmed: “Two TBMs will be delivered to Old Oak Common later this year, and placed into the underground box, ready to begin boring the Euston Tunnel.”
The Euston scheme was mothballed last March by transport secretary Mark Harper because of concerns about rising costs.
The HS2 job at Euston station is set to be built by a joint venture of Mace and Spanish contractor Dragados.
A report published earlier this spring said that the regeneration of Euston station will contribute £41bn to the UK economy by 2053 and create 34,000 new jobs.
A host of industry bosses have said not building a station at Euston makes no sense. In March, Keller chief executive Michael Speakman called the move “bonkers” and Vaughan said: “The economic case [to build the HS2 station at Euston] is massive. Look at King’s Cross and all of that redevelopment.”
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