TBMs Millicent and Ursula arrived in London for the super sewer Tideway, the company building London’s super sewer, has welcomed the first shipment of two more TBMs in preparation for the start of tunnelling later this year. The TBMs, named Millicent and Ursula, were built by NFM in Le Creusot, France and have travelled more than 800 km (500 miles) to London via Hamburg, Germany.

Weighing in at more than 1300 t each, Millicent and Ursula are the project’s largest TBMs. When fully assembled, they will be 8.8 m in diameter and more than 100 m long.To make the journey from France the machines had to be dismantled and will arrive in several parts over the coming weeks and be reassembled at Tideway’s Kirtling Street site in Battersea, close to Battersea Power Station.

Millicent was named after Dame Millicent Fawcett, an English suffragist, intellectual, and political leader, who is soon to be the first woman to be commemorated with a statue erected at Parliament Square.

Ursula was named after Audrey ‘Ursula’ Smith, a British cryobiologist at King’s College Hospital in South London who discovered the use of glycerol to protect human red blood cells during freezing.

Millicent will tunnel 5 km from Kirtling Street to Carnwath Road in Fulham while Ursula will tunnel 7.6km from Kirtling Street to Chambers Wharf in Bermondsey.  More from uk/54 and https://www.tideway.london. 08/18.