London Crossrail TBM Victoria, named after Queen Victoria who oversaw the birth of modern railways, has successfully broken in to the eastern end of Liverpool Street Crossrail station.
The breakthrough, 40 m beneath the City of London, is part of Crossrail’s longest tunnel drive, 8.3 km from Limmo Peninsula, near Canning Town, to Farringdon.
Victoria now has 750 m of tunnel left to bore, before arriving at her final destination at Farringdon station this Spring.
Victoria has joined her sister machine Elizabeth at Liverpool Street who arrived in January. TBM Elizabeth, named after HM The Queen, will shortly begin her journey to Farringdon. Elizabeth’s arrival will link all Crossrail tunnels for the first time with the big east/west breakthrough at Farringdon in the spring.
On completion of Crossrail tunnelling, a total of 42 km of rail tunnel will have been bored as part of Europe’s largest infrastructure project. Over 40 km have now been constructed.
Elizabeth and Victoria each weigh 1,000 t, are 150 m-long and over 7 m in diameter. They are the last of eight Crossrail tunnel machines to have carved a route beneath London linking the West End, the City, Canary Wharf and southeast London.
Crossrail will boost the capital’s rail capacity by 10 percent, bringing an additional 1.5 million people within a 45 minutes commute of central London.
Liverpool Street is one of ten new Crossrail stations being built in central and southeast London. The new station will be located between London Underground’s existing Liverpool Street and Moorgate stations, with connections to both.
Crossrail services through central London will commence in December, 2018. When the TfL-run Crossrail service is fully open in 2019, it will give commuters easy access to destinations across London and the South East including Canary Wharf and Heathrow.
Joint Venture Dragados Sisk is constructing the eastern tunnels between Pudding Mill Lane and Stepney Green, Limmo Peninsula and Farringdon, and Victoria Dock Portal and Limmo.
The station tunnels at Liverpool Street have been built by a joint venture comprising Balfour Beatty, BeMo Tunnelling, Morgan Sindall and Vinci Construction.
Click here, here and uk/40 for tunnelbuilder archive. Visit http://www.crossrail.co.uk. 11/15.
