Engineers from HS2’s London tunnels contractor, Skanska Costain Strabag JV, have begun lifting the last of four giant tunnelling machines to the surface.
Weighing a total of 1,700 tonnes and stretching for around 150m, tunnel boring machine (TBM) Anne must be lifted out of the shaft in sections using a giant gantry crane.
The first part, including the 9.11m diameter cutterhead, was lifted out of a shaft at Green Park Way in Greenford, west London, after 16 months underground.
Anne is named after Lady Anne Byron, an educational reformer and philanthropist who established the Ealing Grove School in 1834 – England’s first cooperative school, which provided education for working-class children in west London.
Anne was manufactured by TBM specialist Herrenknecht in Germany.
