Crossrail's First Tunnel is Finished

Construction marks half way point

Crossrail Ltd has finished its first train tunnel, 6·8 km between the Royal Oak and Farringdon.

It comes as the companies tunnelling machines reach the 13 mile point in their 26 mile marathon tunnel build.

The tunnel boring machine known as ' Phylis' will now be dismantled and removed.

Andy Mitchell, Crossrail Programme Director said:

''Crossrail has not only completed the first Crossrail tunnel under London but has reached the half-way point for our tunnelling machines with a phenomenal 13 miles of train tunnels constructed to-date. A further six tunnelling machines are currently hard at work constructing over 100 metres of new tunnel each day with major tunnelling due to complete next year.”

This week, the final pre-cast concrete rings will be cast at Crossrail’s temporary concrete segment factory for the western tunnels at Old Oak Common. The rings are erected by the tunnelling machine as it excavates the earth and moves forward underground.

More than 1,000 people are working on the western tunnel section of the project, building new train tunnels between Royal Oak at Farringdon, and new passenger, platform and service tunnels for new stations at Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road and Farringdon. Another 9,000 people are working across the project.

When it opens in 2018, Crossrail say train travel will be transformed across London and the south east, delivering faster journey times, boosting London’s rail capacity by 10% and bringing an additional 1.5 million people closer to the capital’s business centres.

Over 200 million passengers are expected to travel on Crossrail each year.

10th October 2013