Cecilia joins Florence on Chiltern tunnelling
The second of two 2000 tonne tunnel boring machines (TBMs), which will excavate the 10-mile long HS2 tunnels beneath the Chilterns, was launched at the end of June.
NAMED Cecilia after Buckinghamshire-born astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a
170 metre-long tunnel boring machine has joined its identical sister Florence (named after Florence Nightingale) to excavate new HS2 tunnels.
Working from the south end of the Chiltern tunnels at West Hyde (north of Denham in Buckinghamshire), the pair will bore the parallel up and down tunnels respectively. Florence began work around six weeks earlier, and will feed back geological data that should allow Cecilia to operate at a slightly faster rate. Florence will also be slowed down by work behind it to construct the cross passageways between the two tunnels.
Both TBMs are expected to break through at the end of 2024 after running almost nonstop for three-and-a-half years.