The Long Itchington Wood Tunnel in Warwickshire is the first of the twin-bore tunnels to finish its civil engineering phase
The HS2 twin-bore tunnel is a mile in length, and will take the railway into the West Midlands.
Essential parts of the tunnel are now complete, including three cross passages, concrete finishing works and base slabs, and emergency and maintenance walkways.
The HS2 twin-bore tunnel now needs internal fittings
The tunnel is now set to be fitted with complex power, track, and signalling systems.
The tunnel is one of five twin-bore tunnels in the HS2 project, and is but one mile of what will be 27.4 miles made by twin-bore tunnels.
The Long Itchington Wood Tunnel was started in June 2020, and was excavated using a 125m long tunnel boring machine in 2021. The machine was named Dorothy, after the first British woman to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dorothy Hodgkin.
Both bores of the tunnel were completed by March 2023.
The tunnel excavation process moved roughly 750,000 tonnes of material, which has gone to use elsewhere on HS2’s route, such as creating embankments.
The Long Itchington Wood Tunnel was built by Balfour Beatty VINCI
The tunnel will connect HS2 to the West Midlands, going from Warwickshire to Birmingham, before going onwards to Staffordshire.
Doug Barnett, Senior Project Manager for HS2 Ltd, said: “It’s a small part of HS2 but it’s been four and a half years of my life in which I’ve seen this construction go from its very embers to nearing completion – a really proud moment for me personally.
“Long Itchington Wood Tunnel is a tremendous feat of engineering and would not have been possible without a huge amount of continuous work put in over the past five years – I’d like to thank everyone involved working both onsite and behind the scenes for their support.”
Jules Arlaud, tunnelling director for Balfour Beatty VINCI, said: “The scale of this achievement is enormous. A dedicated workforce of around 380 people have worked tirelessly over the past five years to reach this latest phase of construction, where the tunnels are now fitted with three cross-passages and the concrete finishing works, base slabs, and walkways are also complete.
“Throughout this project, our expert tunnelling team have installed a total of 1,582 concrete rings across both tunnels, with each ring made from eight two-metre-wide segments, each weighing up to 8 tonnes.”
Earlier this month, HS2 announced that the Small Dean viaduct was slid into place well ahead of schedule, and in January the Kenilworth Bypass entered its final phase of construction.
