On the 09/06/2021 HS2 launched a national vote to name their third TBM – weight 2,000 t and diameter 10 m - that will dig a one-mile twin bore tunnel under Long Itchington Wood in Warwickshire.
Three names have been shortlisted from over 180 entries submitted by people in Warwickshire, who were asked to nominate the names of women closely associated with the county. The vote is now open, with the online competition running until the end of June. The names are:
Anne - named after Anne Hathaway, who was the wife of the country’s most famous playwright William Shakespeare. She was born in 1556 and her childhood home nearby in Stratford-upon-Avon was bought by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in 1892 and turned into a museum. Suggested by a resident from Nuneaton.
Dorothy - named after Dorothy Hodgkin, who in 1964 became the first British woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her discoveries included confirming the structure of penicillin, and her work with insulin paved the way for it to be used on a large scale for treatment of diabetes. She died in 1994 in Shipston-on-Stour in Warwickshire. Suggested by a student at Warwickshire College Group.
Mary Ann - named after Mary Ann Evans, better known by her pen name George Eliot, who was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She was born in Nuneaton and her novels, most famously 'Middlemarch', are celebrated for their realism and psychological insights. Suggested by a pupil at North Leamington School.
This is the third HS2 TBM that will be put to a public vote, after the first two machines Florence and Cecilia already tunnelling under the Chilterns were named using the same process. The winner of the national vote will be announced later in the summer.
The Long Itchington Wood TBM - manufactured by Herrenknecht - will begin tunnelling under Warwickshire later this year and will be operated by HS2’s main works contractor for the West Midlands, Balfour Beatty Vinci (BBV). The TBM will take around 5 months to complete the first bore of two parallel tunnels. Once the first bore is complete, the TBM will be extracted at the South Portal before being transported by road back to the North Portal to commence the second bore. The final section will become a ‘green tunnel’ - also known as a cut and cover tunnel - where a soil ‘roof’ is built around the tunnel entrance to integrate the portal into the natural landscape.
Click here to vote and here for further information on the project, here and uk/65 for the tunnelbuilder archive. Visit https://www.hs2.org.uk/. 23/21.
