HS2 tunnelling has broken through into the Old Oak Common Station box in west London, marking a major milestone for the high speed rail project and bringing London closer to its largest new station in at least a century.
Rail Minister Lord Hendy described the station as "the largest station built in London for must be at least 100 years," speaking to The Standard after the breakthrough. "Look at the architecture, look at the size of it. It's going to be absolutely wonderful," he said.
A feat of engineering beneath west London
The 850-metre station box is so long it could fit the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa. Gleaming stone platforms for the HS2 high speed line stretch into the distance, while eight platforms above serve the Elizabeth line, Great Western Railway and Heathrow Express services.
The weight of some 14,000 double-decker buses has been excavated to connect the 14-platform rail super hub, which will be used by up to 250,000 passengers a day, to the high speed line.
Mining through London clay
Unlike HS2's other excavated tunnels, which have predominantly been built using gigantic tunnel boring machines, the two 360-metre long sections were mined through London clay using tunnel excavators and lined with 30,000 cubic metres of sprayed concrete.
The digging continues, with tunnellers heading metre-by-metre towards the London terminal station of Euston. Huge tunnel boring machines, launched from the eastern end of the Old Oak Common Station box at the start of the year, are continuing their 4.5-mile journeys towards the heart of London.
Timeline and economic impact
The project is expected to be complete by mid-2027, but trains will not run at speeds up to 200 miles per hour until later. High speed trains will not start running from Old Oak Common to Birmingham until between 2036 and 2039, with the leg to Manchester having been controversially cancelled. The full service from Euston to Birmingham and a connection to the West Coast Main Line is not expected to run until between 2040 and 2043.
The HS2 project has been dogged by delays and costs soaring, possibly to as high as £102 billion. When complete, the journey from Euston to Birmingham will be shortened to just 45 minutes.
Lord Hendy, a former London Transport Commissioner, said: "Of course, like the Elizabeth line, the day it opens, everybody will have forgotten how long it took and how much it cost. But they'll be concentrating on the benefits, and I think we'll see here a huge benefit to the economy of London, driven by this railway, and of course the economy of Birmingham and further north as the trains get further north."
