Old Oak Common
PAUL STEPHEN heads to north west London, to view progress on the new £1.3 billion station for HS2 at Old Oak Common
RAIL pays a visit to north west London, to view progress on the new £1.3 bn HS2 station at Old Oak Common.
High Speed 2 is a project synonymous with numbers.
And whether it’s the projected cost (£ 56 billion), the number of jobs it will support (40,000), or even the number of trees to be planted along its route (seven million), those numbers also tend to be quite large.
But as impressive as they might sound, the actual outputs of HS2 will inevitably remain a purely paper exercise until more tangible progress can be observed.
After all, main construction works are not scheduled to commence on Phase 1 from London to Birmingham until later this year. And contracts have yet to be awarded for several vital ingredients of the project - including rolling stock, and the construction of new stations at Birmingham International and Curzon Street.
Meanwhile, crucial legislation is not even on the statute book yet for Phase 2 to Manchester and Leeds, and has still to navigate its way through Parliament in what continues to be a highly volatile political climate.
It remains to be seen just how difficult that journey will be, with economic uncertainty persisting over the implications of Brexit on March 29, and the prospect of a Comprehensive Spending Review to follow where major infrastructure projects such as HS2 will once again be thrust into the spotlight.
If that wasn’t enough to contend with, there has also been a recent resurgence among HS2 critics who have sensed an opportunity to pour additional cold water on the project.
Fuelled by claims of poor cost control at HS2 Ltd, aired in the BBC’s Panorama programme last December, and then reinforced by a string of high-profile industry leaders (including former Rail Freight Group chairman Lord
Old Oak Common will redraw the UK rail map in terms of passenger flows with unparalleled interchange opportunities. From either above or below ground there will be direct services to three major UK airports and eight out of Britain’s ten largest cities. Matthew Botelle, Project Director for Old Oak Common, HS2 Ltd
Berkeley), objectors need only to point to the cost overruns and delays suffered by Crossrail (plus the resignation of HS2 and Crossrail chairman Sir Terry Morgan on December 5) in their attempts to turn the tide of public opinion.
Whichever side of the fence RAIL readers have chosen to be on, it would seem difficult for anybody at the moment not to subscribe to the age-old maxim that ‘seeing is believing’.
Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling’s pledge, made on January 24, to press on with Phase 2 ( RAIL 872) will have injected some much-needed confidence back into HS2’s forecasts to open as far as Birmingham in 2026 and then to Manchester and Leeds some seven years later, but those dates will still feel distant to even the strongest of supporters.
In the meantime, however, there are already some signs that what will become Europe’s largest construction project is beginning to take shape.
HS2 Ltd says it has already let some £10bn worth of contracts, it is supporting 7,000 jobs in the supply chain, and there are 62 live sites on Phase 1 - including at Old Oak Common.
Located on the site of the former Great Western Railway depot (which closed on December 8 2018 after 112 years of service, see panel), HS2 Ltd occupies a long and thin strip of railway land wedged between the Great Western Main Line to the south, and the Elizabeth Line depot to the north - which will support TfL Rail-operated services once the delayed Crossrail project is complete.
It is here where a £1.3bn ‘super-hub’ will be built to provide a direct interchange between the Elizabeth Line, HS2 and the Great Western Main Line from 2026.
Designs for the new station (created by WSP UK and WilkinsonEyre architects) were released by HS2 Ltd for public consultation on February 5 ( RAIL 871), with a joint venture comprising Balfour Beatty, VINCI Construction, VINCI Construction Grands Projets SAS and SYSTRA then awarded the contract to build it just a day later ( RAIL 872).
The designs show that the new station will be situated above and below ground, with six high-speed platforms located in a 1km-long and 60 metre-wide subterranean box with twin tunnels at either end - to link it to the HS2 terminus at nearby Euston and the outskirts of London to the west.
Up to 18 trains per hour are expected to call at these 450 metre-long high-speed platforms, which will be located 20 metres below ground, with a link provided to eight surface-level platforms via escalators to a new concourse and overbridge.
Of the eight surface platforms, four will be for Crossrail and four for the Great Western Main Line, providing connections to central London, Heathrow Airport, Essex, Kent,
South Wales and the west of England. The current station design also includes potential for future services to call there from the Chiltern Main Line, which would help to relieve pressure on London Marylebone.
According to Matthew Botelle, HS2 Ltd’s project director for Old Oak Common, the subterranean box being built will be the largest in the UK and the second largest in the world.
He says it was this enormous feat of engineering, combined with the prospect of presiding over the construction of what will become one of the UK’s best connected stations, that attracted him to the role, having previously served in the Middle East as project director for Dubai’s metro project, and as Transport for London’s strategic director for the Northern Line Extension.
“At the moment there’s nothing much to see, but we’ll be going from zero passengers to a forecast in excess of 100 million a year (250,000 per day) within just a few years,” he says.
“That is a figure in excess of London Waterloo [Britain’s current busiest station], which makes us very different from anything else being built for HS2.
“Old Oak Common will redraw the UK rail map in terms of passenger flows with unparalleled interchange opportunities, and represents quite a seismic shift. From either above or below ground there will be direct services to three major UK airports (Heathrow, Manchester and Birmingham) and eight out of Britain’s ten largest cities.
“The HS2 platforms will be in a 1km-long box at a depth of 20 metres, which is over four times the height of the tallest tower at Canary Wharf [One Canada Square - 235m] and three times the Shard [Britain’s tallest building - 310m] if you laid them on their side. 800,000m3 of earth will need to come out of that box, which is quite frankly enormous.”
Excavated material for the station box, as well as more than two million m3 of material from the two tunnels either side, will be transported by a conveyor belt and then removed by rail from the nearby Willesden Euroterminal depot on the West Coast Main Line to a destination that is yet to be decided. HS2 Ltd says it intends to reuse as much as possible for earthworks elsewhere on the line.
The designs also show that unlike other new underground stations recently built in the capital for Crossrail, the station box at Old Oak Common will not feature extensive overground development.
Botelle explains that this is because it would not be practical to provide the necessary number of crossbeams needed to bear the weight, owing to the sheer size of the subterranean box and the amount of vertical supports that would then be required within it.
A large public park will be provided instead, and form a key part of the public realm in the regeneration plans for the wider area that are being led by the Mayor of London’s Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation.
OPDC’s plans include proposals for mixeduse development, with commercial, residential and leisure uses in this largely industrial part of north west London, and with the new station at its heart. By creating up to 65,000 jobs and 25,500 new homes, it is being billed
as the UK’s largest regeneration project.
Botelle adds: “Stratford International is in a big open box on HS1, which is wasted space, so we’re slabbing over Old Oak Common to create far more usable public realm, which is a very significant win for local communities.
“We’ve also safeguarded for a potential Chiltern Railways interchange by demonstrating in the design that we can leave provision, even though the final decision does not have to made right now.
“Future proofing has been my mantra since I arrived [in November 2015]. I call it non-preclusion, so that we do not affect future generations as much as possible.”
The station designs are expected to be approved within the next few weeks, and an application for a Schedule 17 (of the High Speed Rail Act 2017) consent order submitted in April.
In the meantime, a joint venture comprising Costain and Skanska (CSJV) is currently on site, to clear the ground and prepare it ahead of the arrival of the main construction partner later this year.
On RAIL’s visit on January 18, the workforce headcount totalled approximately 75, comprising a 25-strong combined management team from HS2 Ltd and CSJV and 40 to 50 skilled operatives for the army of earth movers that were busy breaking up the open ground where GWR’s reception sidings once stood.
Their task is to remove the top soil down to a depth of between 1.5 to two metres, which is then capped using the excavated material once it has been reclassified and any concrete sifted out.
Demolition of the sheds vacated by GWR last December is then due to commence in March, and will finish by the end of the summer when the land on which they stand will receive the same remedial attention. The whole site will then be handed over to the main construction partner by the end of the year.
Leading the team from CSJV is Skanska senior project manager Shaun Sheppard, who points to the relative ease of the task at hand compared with the one faced by his colleagues at Euston.
Both must perform the same role of preparing the ground and surrounding area in advance of main construction. But at Euston, there is the not-so-small obstacle of St James’s burial ground, where 40,000 human remains are currently being removed by a large team of specialist archaeologists, for reinternment at an appropriate location that has still to be decided by HS2 and relevant church authorities.
He says: “This site has been a depot for over 100 years, so there’s lots of hydrocarbons. But fortunately we’re not in a Euston situation, where there are cemeteries to move. Remediation is therefore going entirely as planned at this stage, which is all about de-risking the main construction schedule.
“By doing all this now, we optimise the potential for the construction partner to have a ‘hot start’ later this year. And by doing a large part of their mobilisation for them it should make the whole process as efficient as possible for everybody.”
He adds: “The lack of archaeology helps my schedule, but logistically there is still a lot of planning required. We only have one entrance to the site, for example, through which waste and scrap metal must go out and piling mats and machinery must come in.
“It’s a bit of a pinch point, but we’re very confident that the handover will be seamless. There’s still a lot for us to do before we get there, and now it’s just a case of getting on and delivering it.”
For all those closely following the twists and turns of the HS2 project, seeing definitely is believing at Old Oak Common. Although still a mere building site, it has ably provided a dose of reality on the size and scale of what is to come over the next few years.
We’re very confident that the handover will be seamless. There’s still a lot for us to do before we get there, and now it’s just a case of getting on and delivering it. Shaun Sheppard, Senior Project Manager, Skanska