By rosebell
Hosting a railway line into the West Midlands, the Long Itchington Wood Tunnel is a one-mile (1.6km) twin-bore tunnel developed and the first deep tunnel on the high-speed route, so High Speed Two (HS2) announced the completion of civil engineering works at this section.
While the important elements, such as three cross passages, concrete finishing works and base slabs, as well as emergency and maintenance walkways has been completed by HS2, the next phase of the development includes fitting the tunnel with complex systems needed to operate the high-speed line, such as power, track, and signalling.
As the first of five twin-bore tunnels on the HS2 project to reach this stage, Long Itchington Wood has a total of 27.4 miles (44km) of the route between London and the West Midlands.
According to HS2 senior project manager Doug Barnett: “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.”
June 2020 was the date of commencing work on the Long Itchington Wood tunnel, and the tunnel boring machine Dorothy commissioned in December 2021 and excavation completed in March 2023.
The quantity of dug material during the excavation process was almost 750,000 tonnes, which has been reused to build embankments along the railway route.
Construction of 56 miles (90km) of tunnel from Long Itchington to Birmingham and Staffordshire, is up to HS2 project main works contractor for the West Midlands, Balfour Beatty VINCI.
Including engineering graduate Alfie Ward, who contributed his design knowledge and surveying skills, a total of 380 people supported the Long Itchington Wood tunneling project.
Alfie said: “Working as a young engineering graduate on the Long Itchington Wood Tunnel was the perfect platform to launch my career from. This experience at such an early stage in my career meant I was able to learn lots of new skills, which I’m now applying at Bromford Tunnel, as a site engineer.”
The intention of designing this tunnel project is to minimising construction impact, preserving ancient woodland, avoiding local villages, and supporting more than 31,000 jobs.
This HS2 services is due to include a dedicated high-speed line between London and the West Midlands, driving economic growth and enhancing the West Coast Main Line, after completion.
The first viaduct at Delta Junction in North Warwickshire was recently completed by HS2 and progress on a new green bridge in Warwickshire is set to cross the high-speed railway.
“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 tunneling 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,” said Balfour Beatty Vinci tunneling director Jules Arlaud.
