A major milestone in the construction of London’s newest rail line has been achieved with the lowering of two 550 tonne tunnelling machines into a 40 metre deep shaft in east London.

Europe’s largest crane was used at Limmo Peninsula, near Canning Town, to lower sections of Crossrail’s eastern tunnel boring machines (TBMs), Elizabeth and Victoria.

Now that the machines are safely inside, each machine’s 10 gantry sections are being lowered down a nearby shaft. The gantry sections will be connected underground to the rear of the TBMs.

Similar to a rocket launch, perfect weather conditions were needed to execute the lifts.

The TBMs will dig Crossrail’s tunnels from Limmo Peninsula to Farringdon, travelling via Canary Wharf, Whitechapel and Liverpool Street. At approximately 8.3km in length, Elizabeth’s and Victoria’s drives will be the longest on Crossrail.

A new tunnel segment manufacturing facility recently begun full production at Chatham in Kent to create over 100,000 concrete segments needed for the tunnels. The facility will manufacture more than 200 segments a day and operate 24 / 7.

The segments are being delivered to the site by barge and moved around the site on small locomotives, keeping thousands of lorries off the roads.

A conveyor system and more barges are being used to remove around 1.2 million tonnes of excavated material as the TBMs dig.

HEADING BELOW Crossrail’s third tunnel boring machine being lowered

www.crossrail.co.uk0345 602 3813FREEPOST CROSSRAIL

EASTENDERS START TO DIG

ELIZABETH’S FACELIFT Installing Elizabeth’s cutter head

MOVING AHEADISSUE 26 NOVEMBER/2012

Phyllis, our first tunnel boring machine, has entered the footprint of the new Paddington station having travelled one kilometre east from Royal Oak. The project’s second machine, Ada, also broke ground recently and we now have two machines driving towards Farringdon.

Phyllis was carefully navigated under London Underground’s Hammersmith & City line, the Great Western Main Line and Thames Water infrastructure on her underground journey. The Paddington station team completed sections of the diaphragm walls before Phyllis’ arrival and now the foundation building and the tunnelling are progressing simultaneously. Construction schedules are being constantly coordinated, so that the teams can work beside each other safely.

You can follow the progress of the machines on the Near You page of our website.

Phyllis and the western tunnelling team recently featured on Built in Britain, a BBC Two series presented by Evan Davis.

One of Crossrail’s most tangible legacies, Wallasea Island nature reserve, is officially under construction following a launch by the new Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson.

Wallasea Island, made from Crossrail’s tunnelled material, will be home to tens of thousands of migratory birds, and combat the threats from climate change and coastal flooding.

The island in the Thames Estuary will be transformed from farmland into a thriving wetland, twice the size of the City of London and teeming with bird and marine life. The landmark project, of a scale never before attempted in Europe, has been made possible through our unique partnership with the RSPB.

We will deliver 4.5 million tonnes of clean earth to the island to restore the wetland to the coastal marshland it once was.

The RSPB predicts a massive increase in the number of birds on the island when it is complete. They say that it could also see the return of birds that once bred in England, such as Kentish plovers, which haven’t been seen on the island for 50 years.

The Crossrail tunnel under Paddington

Crossrail Chief Executive Andrew Wolstenholme, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson and RSPB Chief Executive Mike Clarke launch Europe’s largest man-made coastal reserve

BIRD RESERVE TAKES FLIGHT

1KM DOWN 41 TO GO

NETWORK RAIL GETS READY

We are temporarily re-using a unique part of London’s transport history, the Kingsway Tram Tunnel, below the bustling streets of Holborn.

The tram tunnel underneath the Kingsway Road once took passengers from Holborn to Waterloo Bridge providing a link between north and south London’s tram networks. The tramway was opened in 1906 serving two stations in the tunnel at Holborn and Aldwych. It was enlarged in 1939 to accommodate double deck trams.

The tramway closed in 1952, not long before all trams were removed from London’s streets.

We are making use of the space to build a grout shaft below the floor of the tunnel to

protect buildings from any potential ground movement during tunnelling. This shaft will allow engineers to pump grout (a cement-like substance) deep into the ground to firm it up.

Like our restoration and redevelopment of the Connaught Tunnel, we couldn’t pass up the chance to re-use this part of infrastructure history. Using the area below ground will also decrease the disruption to people living and moving around the area.

As the tunnel is a Grade II listed structure, we will return it to its prior condition when our works are completed.

NEW ROLE FOR HISTORIC TRAMWAY

Kingsway Tram Tunnel in operation

The Crossrail route

TAPLOW

HEATHROWAIRPORT

SLOUGH IVERHAYES &

HARLINGTON HANWELLEALING

BROADWAY PADDINGTONTOTTENHAMCOURT ROAD

CUSTOMHOUSE

MAIDENHEAD BURNHAM LANGLEY WEST DRAYTON

SOUTHALL WEST EALING ACTONMAIN LINE

BOND STREET FARRINGDON WHITECHAPEL

MARYLAND MANOR PARK SEVEN KINGS CHADWELLHEATH

GIDEA PARK BRENTWOODLIVERPOOL

STREET

WOOLWICH

ABBEY WOOD

STRATFORD FOREST GATE ILFORD GOODMAYESHAROLD

WOOD SHENFIELDROMFORD

CANARYWHARF

Existing station

New station

Surface line

Tunnel

Portal (tunnel entrance and exit)

Network Rail is getting ready for their major works programme that will start in 2014.

A total of 27 stations will benefit from much-needed investment ranging from step-free access, platform extensions to improvements to station buildings. This upgrade work will enable new high frequency services and 200m long Crossrail trains to operate through central London to destinations east and west of the capital.

Design plans for the first of the stations to benefit from the upgrade work are currently being developed and will be shared with local authorities before being finalised.

The multi-billion pound upgrade of the rail network will include improvements to the Great Eastern and Great Western Main Lines including better stations, electrification, new and improved signalling and the integration of the new Crossrail tunnels with the existing railway.

To facilitate electrification of the Great Western Main Line, Network Rail will start work this Christmas to replace eight bridges, build up the parapets of three others and carry out track works to the east of Hayes & Harlington station.

Crossrail will pioneer the use of inclined lifts to provide step-free access at Farringdon and Liverpool Street stations.

Use of the new technology was announced when Crossrail and Transport for London awarded a £45 million contract for around 50 lifts for the new Crossrail stations as well as five lifts for Tube stations. The contract includes maintenance for up to 22 years.

All Crossrail stations in central London will have step-free access from street to train. The new inclined lifts allow groups travelling together to have passengers with wheelchairs, buggies or large baggage to take an incline lift while others take an escalator directly alongside.

The lifts are necessary at Farringdon and Liverpool Street stations because the platforms will sit below existing buildings, preventing the installation of traditional vertical lifts.

UPLIFTING TECHNOLOGY

Incline lifts

The railway could help create £5.5 billion in added value to real estate along the route between 2012 and 2021 according to new research by GVA, the UK’s largest independent commercial property consultant.

The report, the first detailed study published on the property impact of Crossrail, illustrates how improvements in journey times and the frequency of services will make significant impacts on London’s commercial and residential market.

The report’s key findings include:

1) that the project is already having a positive impact on investment decisions and at many locations is influential in supporting new development

2) over 57,000 new homes and 3.25 million square metres of commercial office space will be created as a result of Crossrail

3) that office values around the central London stations will increase over the next decade by 10 per cent in capital value above a rising baseline projection

4) residential capital values are projected to increase immediately around Crossrail stations in central London by 25 per cent, and by 20 per cent in the suburbs, above a rising baseline projection.

Key places to watch include Abbey Wood, Custom House, Ealing Broadway, Southall, Slough and Woolwich.

£5.5BN PROPERTY BOOMSOHO’S

7 STOREY EXCAVATION

Dean Street site

Excavation of Crossrail’s Tottenham Court Road western ticket hall in London’s busy Soho has now reached track level, equivalent to seven storeys below ground.

We have removed 35,000m3  of material from the site at Dean Street over a six month period – enough to fill all three Olympic swimming pools in the London 2012 Aquatics Centre three times over. 

Excavation has taken place 24/7 with the team employing a number of techniques including excavators, a long arm excavator, a gantry crane and a hydraulic grab to suit the ever increasing depth.

Work has now begun to create the 1.8m thick base slab for the ticket hall. Sprayed concrete lining works will soon begin to prepare the station box to receive Ada and Phyllis, our tunnel boring machines from the west.

Watch a time-lapse video of the excavation on our website or on our You Tube channel.

During October over 2,500 people visited a month long exhibition to celebrate the half-way point in our archaeology programme. The exhibition, Bison to Bedlam, followed on from the hugely popular pop-up event that saw over 550 visitors in just one day.

The exhibition featured almost 100 finds including a skeleton from the infamous Bedlam psychiatric hospital, a silver Roman coin, 55 million year old amber and a section of mammoth jaw bone.

Our archaeology programme began in 2009 with investigations at Tottenham Court Road, where archaeologists uncovered the former Crosse & Blackwell factory. Since then we have discovered finds dating from prehistoric times to the industrial revolution including Tudor artefacts and remnants of Britain’s industrial heritage.

A series of seminars lead by archaeologists working on the project accompanied the exhibition.

As the exhibition opened, we made the project’s first Bronze Age discovery, remains of a 3,500 year old transport pathway in east London. The finds included two wooden stakes that have been cut. These may have been used to build a timber pathway to allow hunters easier access to find wildlife that lived on the wetlands. We also found a hammer stone that was used as a tool.

The display material and seminar notes from the exhibition are now available on our website.

Over 1,000 people have now been trained at the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy (TUCA) since it opened in east London, last September.

The Academy is the UK’s only purpose-built facility for training people in key tunnelling and underground construction skills. It has an unrivalled range of specialist plant and equipment. TUCA’s facilities are designed to replicate a tunnelling project.

As work on Crossrail intensifies, and to meet the wider needs of the construction industry, the Academy has now launched an expanded curriculum with new courses and brand new training facilities including a high-tech concrete testing lab.

TUCA will train nearly 3,500 people in key construction skills over the lifetime of the project.

The Academy is also playing a key role in getting unemployed Londoners back to work. A range of pre-employment courses offered at the Academy have already equipped hundreds of long-term unemployed with new skills. These include an introduction to general construction and metal formwork.

When Crossrail is complete, the Academy will continue to provide training for other major UK infrastructure projects.

Elliot Killoran is Crossrail’s 100th apprentice. The project is committed to providing at least 400 apprenticeships and 350 work placements over the lifetime of the job and we are bang on the mark to achieve (and possibly surpass) that goal.

“I’ve been working for DSJV at Stepney Green, in east London, since August and so far I’m loving it. I was surprised at the pace of the project, it moves and changes all the time but as I am interested in all aspects of civil engineering, this creates a great opportunity for me to learn on the job” says Elliot

Crowds at Bison to Bedlam

Stepney Green work site

Skeletal remains

OUR 100TH APPRENTICE

1,000 TRAINED AT TUCA

EXPLORING LONDON’S PAST

DSJV has demonstrated a strong commitment to offering quality, sustainable routes to employment and skills. They have converted 100% of their work experience placements into permanent job and apprenticeship roles.

The conversion rate of job placements and the quality of candidates also speaks volumes of the relationship that DSJV has built with the University of East London. DSJV held an Employment & Skills Fair at the institution earlier this year.

Project Manager Claire Carr explains all

Under Bond Street

We recently opened the doors of our Bond Street and Canary Wharf station work sites and the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy (TUCA) to the public as part of the Open House London weekend.

This exciting annual event showcases London’s unique architecture and allows people to visit buildings and spaces that are not generally open to the public.

Visitors to the Bond Street and Canary Wharf station sites enjoyed engineer-led tours and bird’s eye views of the works. TUCA visitors learned how the striking contemporary design overcame site constraints, how money was saved during construction and an “Excellent” sustainability rating was achieved.

Over 700 people visited Crossrail sites over the Open House weekend.

The Paddington station site also recently held an open day for those interested in careers in construction. The Open Doors event provided a unique opportunity for would be workers to witness first-hand the scale and complexity of the job. Open Doors hopes that events such as this will help to attract a wider, more diverse range of talent into the construction sector.

Sign up at our website and follow us on Twitter to receive notifications about upcoming events.

CONTACT US

OPENING OUR DOORS

We want to ensure that you know everything you want to about Crossrail. We issue this bulletin twice a year and we also send out information sheets about specific works taking place.

Find out more and join our general or station specific mailing lists at:

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