Conveyor means fewer lorry journeys

A new conveyor has started work at HS2’s Long Itchington Wood Tunnel site in Warwickshire.

Balfour Beatty Vinci (BBV), HS2’s Civils contractor for the Midlands, built the 254-metre-long machine to move material currently being excavated from Long Itchington Wood and from a railway cutting in the same location.

HS2 says the conveyor will carry more than 750,000 tonnes of excavated material over the Grand Union Canal, to be reused at other locations along the route.

It expects the new shortcut will remove the equivalent of around 30,000 HGVs from local roads, reducing the impact on the local community and cutting carbon emissions.

The conveyor is expected to be on-site until early next year, when it is scheduled to be dismantled and rebuilt at Water Orton as part of a 1,200-metre-long facility that will remove hundreds more lorries from the road.

HS2 Senior Project Manager Alan Payne said: “It’s initiatives like this that will help us achieve our ambitious target of being net zero carbon as a project from 2035.”

A video shows the conveyor in action at https://youtube.be/ ZHjDH4AGTz0