HS2 has reached a major milestone at the Long Itchington Wood Tunnel in Warwickshire, marking the completion of the civil engineering phase for the first deep tunnel on the high-speed route. This one-mile-long twin-bore tunnel, which will connect the railway to the West Midlands, has seen the completion of crucial elements such as three cross passages, concrete finishing works, base slabs, and emergency and maintenance walkways.
Before the tunnel can be operational, it will undergo internal fitting with complex systems necessary for the high-speed line, including power, track, and signalling. This tunnel is the first of five twin-bore tunnels on the HS2 project to reach this critical stage, with a total of 27.4 miles of the route between London and the West Midlands being in deep, twin-bore tunnels.
Construction of the Long Itchington Wood Tunnel began in June 2020. The 125-metre-long tunnel boring machine, named ‘Dorothy’ after Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin, was launched in December 2021 and completed the excavation of both tunnel bores by March 2023. The excavation process produced around 750,000 tonnes of material, which has been repurposed to build embankments along the railway route. Since the breakthrough nearly two years ago, work has continued to install the tunnel's vital structural components.
The tunnel is being constructed by HS2’s main works contractor for the West Midlands, Balfour Beatty VINCI (BBV), which is responsible for building 56 miles of HS2 from Long Itchington in Warwickshire to Birmingham and 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.”
In total, 380 people have supported the Long Itchington Wood tunnelling project since construction work began. This includes recent engineering graduate Alfie Ward who used his new-found design knowledge and surveying skills to help HS2 engineers successfully complete the tunnel’s cross passage work safely and efficiently.
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.”
Long Itchington Wood Tunnel has been designed to minimise the impact of construction, with local land topography a key factor in the design and delivery process. At 30 metres below ground level, the tunnel preserves an ancient woodland above and avoids local villages.
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.”
The construction of HS2 is progressing steadily between the West Midlands and London, now providing employment for over 31,000 people. Once completed, HS2 will offer high-speed services between London and the West Midlands, and extend further north, fostering economic growth and alleviating congestion on the busiest section of the existing West Coast Main Line.
Recently, significant milestones have been achieved in the West Midlands. HS2 has successfully completed its first viaduct at Delta Junction in North Warwickshire. Additionally, the latest updates reveal progress on a new green bridge that will span the high-speed railway near Kenilworth, Warwickshire.
Photo & Video credit: HS2
