On Saturday 26th July, the team working on the HS2 project lifted the TBM Emily's 9.11m diameter cutterhead, front and middle shield, weighing 880 t, using a large gantry crane, at the Green Park Way site in Greenford, West London. The TBM concluded its 5.47 km (3.4-mile) journey from Victoria Road in Ealing in June, arriving in an underground reception chamber. TBM Emily excavated 775,000 t of London Clay and installed 17,514 concrete tunnel segments. 

TBM Emily - named after Emily Sophia Taylor who helped establish the Perivale Maternity Hospital in 1937 before becoming Ealing’s first female mayor in 1938 - is one of four machines used to construct part of the Northolt Tunnel - a 13.52 km (8.4-mile) tunnel which will take HS2 trains from Old Oak Common Station to the outskirts of the capital. 

Anne, the fourth machine finished the excavation of the tunnel earlier this month and will be removed later this summer.

For further information click here and uk/65 for tunnelbuilder archive. Visit https://www.hs2.org.uk/. 31/25.