Good morning, we're doing an HS2 thing, yes, we are.
I got the tube this morning to Rickmansworth,
jumped in a taxi, come here to the Align site,
that's the name of the company
working on this construction site,
where they're digging 16 kilometre tunnels
through the Chiltern Hills
And today, we're gonna go and have a look
at the south portal.
For the first phase of HS2, between London and Birmingham,
the construction is divided into three sections,
this one is called C1.
Here, over 21 kilometres of track is being laid,
16 kilometres of it in a tunnel,
and three kilometres of it on a viaduct
over the Colne Valley.
And there's also five vent shafts
that are being dug out and built
along that stretch of tunnel as well.
We were invited down to have a look around
at the construction, and the first thing that hits you
is just how huge the whole site is,
so much so that they had to drive us about
in a minibus to get to where we wanted to go.
Even when you're next to it,
you just can't really comprehend it.
Gareth Dennis is doing his rail natter chat.
Gareth, you're getting all over my video, man.
It does look impressive.
It looks extremely impressive.
Yeah, this is the point where the two TBMs,
the Tunnel Boring Machines, had been launched from,
as their lead engineer explained.
Just in front of you, the second TBM,
which name is Cecilia, which will drive
into the Chilterns for 10 miles
for slightly more than 8,000 rings.
We've actually built the number eight two days ago,
so 7,900 and X more to go.
It will be a long journey.
The first one TBM literally is now into the ground,
263 rings as we speak.
With the tunnel being dug
by Tunnel Boring Machines,
Robert Hutchison explained how the placement
of the segments that form the tunnel happens.
Traditionally what would happened,
you'd have to have an operative,
when a segment had been lifted,
would have to climb onto those segments within the TBM,
he'd have to remove those wooden segments,
put them to one side and then stand out the way.
Obviously, that's a confined space
and it's a dangerous space.
So what Boygues has done is, it's introduced a robot,
we call the crocodile,
that basically goes in and
it basically sweeps up those wooden segments and lifts them,
and it puts them to one side.
The site is really huge,
even when you're up close to HS2 works,
it takes a moment to comprehend that everything
is being done on a massive scale.
We've just driven down in the van,
it's a whole gang of us,
and then behind me, you can see very clearly,
in the distance, well,
the TBM there is going into the northbound portal
and the one you can see here, there,
is the southbound portal.
Where I'm standing right now, the tracks are.
Yeah, this is where the track will go.
You're literally standing where the track,
you've just been run over by a high-speed train
in about 10 years' time. You could say that.
So, we're by the entrance,
this is Tunnel Boring Machine, Cecilia,
got Florence, named after Florence Nightingale over there.
Local schools came up with names
and then they were voted upon
and Cecilia and Florence were the two most popular names.
This gantry is wide.
You can see the wheels that it's sat upon as it goes in.
It reminds me of the Brunel's broad gauge.
It's even wider than broad gauge.
It's about, it must be like 10, 11, 12 feet wide.
Imagine if all trains were this wide.
I'm approaching the southern portal.
All right, this is what they call the money shot.
Are you ready for the reveal?
Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go, ooh, ha ha!
You can see Florence's red lights
that's what they're for, you can see where it is.
Absolutely spectacular.
Of course, where I'm standing now will still be tunnel,
will actually be constructed as the tunnel portal
because of the speed these trains are going,
the aerodynamic pressures mean that
they will have a very long extended tunnel portal
with slots to dissipate that energy of essentially
the bow wave, the sound wave that these trains create
as they push into the tunnel.
So, there'll be this long constructed concrete portal
with slots in it that will dissipate that energy.
(engine roaring loudly)
Does it feel like it's getting a little bit closer?
A little, yeah.
Now you've seen it today?
Like, I know you work on it and you do stuff
but every time you do an event like this.
Yeah, so I've obviously talked a lot about HS2,
and I've done little bits of design here and there,
actually further up at Calver
and it never feels real.
As a design engineer,
I love going out and seeing my stuff getting built.
This is very, very cool
and the scale still isn't sinking in,
despite standing next to these incredible machines,
it's just epic.
So, Florence here is the up to London.
That's the one that's already gone a little way,
that's gone around 500 metres,
it's actually gone under the M25,
there's a brilliant side fact as well,
is that HS2 have built their own
sort of construction slip road off the M25.
If you're ever driving along a motorway,
and you see that sign that says "Works Access Only",
that's what they've done here.
They've got their own private access to the M25
for lorries and trucks, et cetera,
to arrive and come from the site.
But the other TBM, Cecilia, it started behind,
that's only gone a few rings down,
because Florence on this side will be the one
that does all the sort of like cross passages and stuff,
Cecilia will actually slowly catch Florence up
and might even emerge 21 kilometres later
out the other side first and beat Florence to it.
Adrien, how many digs have you worked on
in your entire career?
This is the second one,
I've been working on the past four years
on another tunnel project, smaller diameter,
similar length though, 16 kilometre in 3 metre dia.
So, yeah, second toll project.
All right, it's a bit noisy, there's a big digger there.
To continue our tour, when you're jigging,
when the machines are boring, it's so noisy,
but you need tunnel rings and onsite here,
there's like the factory where they make the tunnel rings.
And this is David, he's in charge of the factory
where the tunnel rings are produced.
This is the segment factory.
So, it's a U-shaped building consisting of two factories.
Factory two there, factory one there.
What we do in here, we've got 49 moulds
that we cast as quickly as possible.
Our target production is one mould every 11 minutes.
So during a shift, we are targeted to cast
49 segments per shift.
So, over the two shifts, two factories,
we're targeting 196 segments per day.
I did have to ask though,
how many tunnel rings and segments
are being produced in total?
At the end of the production? 16,043.
So that's 112,301 segments.
Okay, don't break any, will you?
No, I'll try not to.
Have you dropped one yet?
No.
Any cracks?
No, they're all perfect.
I can confirm it is very cured, solid concrete.
David was just telling us, normally they go to places where
they're like, what's that?
Oh, you want to make some tunnel rings?
Oh, go and use that shed over there that's not big enough.
But here, this is a custom-built, purpose-made factory
for producing tunnel rings.
They've made us wear ear plugs because they thought
it was gonna be really noisy and then we turned up
and apparently we've come at lunch time.
So, it's quiet otherwise it would be
very noisy in here right now.
(alarm blaring)
What the heck is this? Where are we?
This is our storage yard.
Storage yard? It's like, wow.
We've got a storage yard for each factory
and each storage yard holds 950 rings.
So we've got a total capacity of 1,900 rings in here,
which is enough to keep the TBMs going for a few months,
in case of any issues.
And before we go,
to give you an even better idea of
where this line is being dug,
let's go back to the map at the start.
But this time, I'll add on the Chiltern main line,
which is to the south of the HS2 line,
whilst the metropolitan line, you can see
it's just there to the north.
And if we're talking maps, well then I also had the thought
that in the same way that HS1 got added onto
the London Rail and Tube Map
because of its connection at Stratford,
that at some point surely,
HS2 is going to have to squeezed in
because of the station connection, Old Oak Common.
Here's an extremely rough idea of where I think
that line would have to go.
And that's going to mean even more redesigning
of this already congested map.
Thanks for letting me be in your video
and thanks for being in my video.
Yes, an absolute pleasure.
It was good.
I'm looking for a summing up.
Oh, well, I mean, I live and breathe HS2,
but coming up and seeing the site, seeing the scale of it,
it still takes a while to sink in, love it.
So, that is the tunnel portals being built here
out in the Chilterns as part of HS2,
twin bore tunnel going on there.
Thanks a lot, thanks for watching.
Thanks for HS2 for inviting us down.
Loads of links in the description
if you want to go and find out more about the project
and all that they're doing
and how it's working.
Press Subscribe, see you soon.
Cheers, bye.