15 ms·

First photo of HS2 tunnel boring machines

107 points by edward 6y ago

Reason077 6y ago
The cutter head interface is appropriately keyed. No chance of putting the square peg in the round hole!
barking 6y ago
Extract from the UK yellow pages from years past: Boring - see Civil Engineers
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It's amazing the expense we are going to to avoid building a railway across a few rich peoples land. Not that this is new, it happened during the steam age.
- barking 6y ago
  Deduct from the cost the price they'd have had to pay for valuable land by going over-ground, maybe? I mean there's a reason the London Underground is underground.
  - youngtaff 6y ago
    There's a lot of tunnelling in Buckinghamshire and other counties with open countryside because the mainly Tory voting areas close to London object to HS2
    - michaelt 6y ago
      If there's one thing I've learned from the Heathrow third runway, it's that "fuck the locals, the nation needs this (according to its supporters)" does not appear to be the way to get large infrastructure projects done. And with the current electoral situation, if merely being a Tory constituency got you a tunnel, HS2 would be in a tunnel from the M25 all the way to the outskirts of Birmingham.
- xendo 6y ago
  Not respecting private property and victimizing rich worked extremely bad for our civilization in the past.
  - youngtaff 6y ago
    Sorry it's a DailyMail link but it's quite clear we chose to bore tunnels through open countryside to keep the Tory shires happy Train lines don‘t take up much space and their impact can be mitigated with landscaping before we go to the expense of tunnels under fields https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084959/HS2-Tory-shires-furious-high-speed-rail-link-gets-ahead.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084959/HS2-Tory-sh...
- Wintamute 6y ago
  Yes it's expensive, but a future where most infrastructure is underground, from mass transit to power and communications, allowing nature to return to the surface, for future generations to enjoy seems like a worthy goal imo, even just on the aesthetic merits, saying nothing of the ecology. Just a damn shame we couldn't build these boring machines in the UK, and funnel the spending into the domestic economy.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    I actually like railways and think there is a need for more capacity up and down the country. What I don't like is the cost of this project. We could get a lot more bang for our buck.
  - TomJansen 6y ago
    Wholeheartedly agree! Giving back to nature is a very good goal. In the Netherlands, there is a growing problem of the "boxyfication" of the landscape (verdozing van het landschap), meaning that because of the growing trend of internet shopping, more and more warehouses and distribution centers are being built in the iconic farm landscape. Moving these structurally simple buildings underground would allow for more space for nature in the already densely populated country
  - kmlx 6y ago
    you can have it both ways. see japan: incredible surface transport options (that are also a sight to behold) and an incredible care for nature.
  - elicash 6y ago
    Shipping goods should be done underground. It'd be nice if PEOPLE could remain above-ground.
- jsmith99 6y ago
  At about £106bn for 531km, that's £200m a km. If the line were built out of a stack of twenty pound notes, it would come to about £100bn. So HS2 costs about the same as a 500km stack of twenties. Only a million people live in Birmingham. That's £100k each.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    Good job it serves far more people that Birmingham then
- DrBazza 6y ago
  Or we could behave like China and just demolish homes without legal recourse. In 50 years, very, very few people will complain about it. Even in Kent now, after HS1 has been around for 10 years, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone that complains about it. It's also added £300m to Kent's economy over the last decade, and the bulk of that has been in the last 5 years as traffic has ramped up. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/13/hs1-provides-300m-boost-kent-economy-first-decade-service/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/13/hs1-provides...]
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    Being serious?
    - DrBazza 6y ago
      No. But I would like it if, for national infrastructure projects the UK would be a bit more assertive. China's approach is too far the other way. And being able to build hundreds of miles of high speed lines for single-digit billions of pounds/dollars tells you everything about wages, and compensation for home owners on the route.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    I've seen some complaints about HS1, but not from people in Kent - just from NIMBYs in Buckinghamshire saying "HS1 was rubbish and nobody uses it and everyone uses it to go to London every dy so the towns it serves are now run down ghost towns"
switch007 6y ago
I wonder how much it will fetch on eBay. One of the Channel Tunnel boring machines sold for £39,999 in 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm
- dogma1138 6y ago
  It’s pretty common to have these machines buried in the tunnel after they done the digging. These are usually custom made one off machines that don’t have much of a life span beyond each project. That was on some level the whole point of the boring company Elon said it was crazy that these machines were discarded or sold for scrap. That said since recovering them would be much easier than landing a rocket I don’t know if there is actually financial motivation to recover them. When they are sold they are usually sold for their effective scrap weight (metal worth minus the cost of getting them offsite and breaking them down).
  - baybal2 6y ago
    When the cost of machinery is a rounding error in the cost of the entire project... Yeah, I don't like that thinking.
    - taneq 6y ago
      Why not? It just means that the main expenses of the project are labour, materials, energy, etc. I don’t imagine the paint for the Sistine Chapel ceiling cost much compared with the cost of painting it.
      - baybal2 6y ago
        If recovered, the cost of the machine would likely repay the recovery operation many times over even if scrapped. What I don't like is the thinking of people who rush for the sign off, and paycheck date.
        dodobirdlord 6y ago
buro9 6y ago
The crazy bit of this is that this is where the tunnels will be built: https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route-map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849 https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route-map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849 "from just inside the M25 to South Heath in Buckinghamshire" South Heath is here https://www.google.com/maps/place/South+Heath/@51.7054459,-0.6893411,11.37z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x48765e6963dc0a2d:0xe00016c272f1065e!2sSouth+Heath,+Great+Missenden!3b1!8m2!3d51.710744!4d-0.6866789!3m4!1s0x48765e6ec734927d:0xdc5eb80894c2f27c!8m2!3d51.7092146!4d-0.682869 https://www.google.com/maps/place/South+Heath/@51.7054459,-0... We are going to tunnel through open country due to the politics and objections from land owners. It is no surprise that the costs have risen.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  It's about time we just did a big nationwide vote for big infrastructure projects. Voters can decide if they want to pay an extra few billion pounds or to keep a little farm village.
  - Already__Taken 6y ago
    That's all very well and good until it's your village. And you know full well it's never the Lords and Lady's in this country at risk of their shooting grounds getting a train through it.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      The massive viaducts at Cullen in Scotland were apparently required to route the railway away from Cullen House: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray
  - growlist 6y ago
    These smaller countryside settlements are precious and wonderful to me. Our towns and especially cities are rapidly losing their individual character with the influence of globalised media, mass immigration and an increasingly commodified and vapid consumerist culture. Please don't will the destruction of the few small pockets of distinctively English heritage we have left.
BlackVanilla 6y ago
In the media, there's been a focus on HS2's ever-growing budget, bulldozing land, and massive delays. These are significant, if not more so than what I'm about to talk about, but it's worth focusing on an aspect frequently not considered: the positive externality of improving human skills. With Crossrail (now Elizabeth Line) nearly finished under London, the Channel Tunnel, and now HS2 tunnels, the UK is exposing some of its workforce to some great tunnelling projects. The skill these workers must have aquired working on these large-scale tunnelling projects is impressive. The UK could even be developing a comparative advantage in tunnelling. It doesn't solve the factors outlined at the start, but it's a side affect few discuss in public discourse when deciding to fund an infrastructure project like HS2. The positive externalities of SpaceX's work or of NASA's work are not limited to the end goal (the fact we fly something to space), it's also that now we have more people with better skills. This is something that the media doesn't focus on when big breakthroughs happen, whether privately- or publicly-funded, and I think that's a shame.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Upvoted. The backlash against HS2 is really annoying, yes it is expensive and some people think it won't benefit the country much - but you covered the reasons why we should be continuing with this project.
  - Brakenshire 6y ago
    HS2 only connects together the largest city, the second largest city, the third largest city, the fourth largest city, the fifth largest city, the seventh largest city and the ninth largest city in the UK together on a single branched train line which will allow travel between them within an hour and a half. Who cares about such economic frivolity!
    - BlackVanilla 6y ago
      This highlights a flaw with the UK's infrastructure projects. The UK is focused on connecting cities with cities, not connection within cities and towns. Asides from London, plenty of cities and big towns suffer from poor public transport. Getting from one side of town to another without a car should not be a struggle. Right now, I think this should be prioritised above city to city public transport links.
BlackVanilla 6y ago
Who knew? You can vote on the names these two TBMs will be given. https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/ https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  At least it's from a set of sensible names this time, not open to witless joke names.
  - Xylakant 6y ago
    Yours and my sense of humor obviously differ, but when I observe the fun people have every year when someone stumbles over the Scottish Trunk Road Gritter Tracker (1), I think that witless joke names serve as a quite good way to have folks relate to their public infrastructure. That said, let me have a quick look where Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney ended up parking for summer. (1) http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2de764a9303848ffb9a4cac0bd0b1aab http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?...
supernova87a 6y ago
As alluded to by another comment below, having even a small specialized workforce trained and skilled in building rail is something that's desireable. Maybe even a topic of national security (or at least national competence). However, people need practice and real projects to stay skilled. And if a country only has 1 major rail project every 30 years, you're not going to be able to maintain that workforce or national skill -- unless that workforce finds projects outside the country to work on. (Or attract people to that field. Maintenance alone is not very interesting to many people.) It becomes a very boom/bust talent pool that loses its sharpness because of lack of wood to chop. I think advanced countries will find these kinds of skills (rail being just an example) attritting to developing countries like China, India where growth means that 10,000 rail-specific engineers have places to practice their skills on real projects that keep on coming. They stamp out an elevated rail bridge every month. First you see the expertise moving to the private sector because government no longer engages in the building of infrastructure. Then even the private sector talent moves overseas to follow the projects. Even an org like Parsons almost cannot compete with this. And that's why you see rail projects going to such countries' companies as top bidders possessing the necessary expertise -- ready to go right now, rather than taking 1 year to even find the people. Talent and ability follows the need (and money) for it.
madengr 6y ago
Back in the cold war, there was a proposal to criss-cross the USA with underground tunnels carrying train-launched ICBMs. Would make for a great post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.
- rleigh 6y ago
  Iain Banks' "Consider Phlebas" has a great section of the story in such a setting.
jessriedel 6y ago
How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs? Given the tight connection to government buyers and cost-plus incentives, is the industry plausibly as sclerotic as the rocket industry was pre-SpaceX? Or are there good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than they already are?
- gsnedders 6y ago
  > How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs? There's a bunch. > Or are there good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than they already are? Mostly that tunnelling through unknown ground is risky (even if you're taken samples, you don't know what every meter is like!) so you don't want to move too fast, you're having to move vast quantities of spoil out, you need to keep the cutting blades cool (they're under immense pressure and friction so they get _hot_, and cooling is hard when you're in a confined tunnel) and we only have materials so hard (so you can't speed up the cutting head)…

107 points by edward 6y ago

Reason077 6y ago

The cutter head interface is appropriately keyed. No chance of putting the square peg in the round hole!

barking 6y ago

Extract from the UK yellow pages from years past: Boring - see Civil Engineers

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

It's amazing the expense we are going to to avoid building a railway across a few rich peoples land. Not that this is new, it happened during the steam age.

barking 6y ago
Deduct from the cost the price they'd have had to pay for valuable land by going over-ground, maybe? I mean there's a reason the London Underground is underground.
- youngtaff 6y ago
  There's a lot of tunnelling in Buckinghamshire and other counties with open countryside because the mainly Tory voting areas close to London object to HS2
  - michaelt 6y ago
    If there's one thing I've learned from the Heathrow third runway, it's that "fuck the locals, the nation needs this (according to its supporters)" does not appear to be the way to get large infrastructure projects done. And with the current electoral situation, if merely being a Tory constituency got you a tunnel, HS2 would be in a tunnel from the M25 all the way to the outskirts of Birmingham.
xendo 6y ago
Not respecting private property and victimizing rich worked extremely bad for our civilization in the past.
- youngtaff 6y ago
  Sorry it's a DailyMail link but it's quite clear we chose to bore tunnels through open countryside to keep the Tory shires happy Train lines don‘t take up much space and their impact can be mitigated with landscaping before we go to the expense of tunnels under fields https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084959/HS2-Tory-shires-furious-high-speed-rail-link-gets-ahead.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084959/HS2-Tory-sh...
Wintamute 6y ago
Yes it's expensive, but a future where most infrastructure is underground, from mass transit to power and communications, allowing nature to return to the surface, for future generations to enjoy seems like a worthy goal imo, even just on the aesthetic merits, saying nothing of the ecology. Just a damn shame we couldn't build these boring machines in the UK, and funnel the spending into the domestic economy.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I actually like railways and think there is a need for more capacity up and down the country. What I don't like is the cost of this project. We could get a lot more bang for our buck.
- TomJansen 6y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree! Giving back to nature is a very good goal. In the Netherlands, there is a growing problem of the "boxyfication" of the landscape (verdozing van het landschap), meaning that because of the growing trend of internet shopping, more and more warehouses and distribution centers are being built in the iconic farm landscape. Moving these structurally simple buildings underground would allow for more space for nature in the already densely populated country
- kmlx 6y ago
  you can have it both ways. see japan: incredible surface transport options (that are also a sight to behold) and an incredible care for nature.
- elicash 6y ago
  Shipping goods should be done underground. It'd be nice if PEOPLE could remain above-ground.
jsmith99 6y ago
At about £106bn for 531km, that's £200m a km. If the line were built out of a stack of twenty pound notes, it would come to about £100bn. So HS2 costs about the same as a 500km stack of twenties. Only a million people live in Birmingham. That's £100k each.
- iso1631 6y ago
  Good job it serves far more people that Birmingham then
DrBazza 6y ago
Or we could behave like China and just demolish homes without legal recourse. In 50 years, very, very few people will complain about it. Even in Kent now, after HS1 has been around for 10 years, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone that complains about it. It's also added £300m to Kent's economy over the last decade, and the bulk of that has been in the last 5 years as traffic has ramped up. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/13/hs1-provides-300m-boost-kent-economy-first-decade-service/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/13/hs1-provides...]
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Being serious?
  - DrBazza 6y ago
    No. But I would like it if, for national infrastructure projects the UK would be a bit more assertive. China's approach is too far the other way. And being able to build hundreds of miles of high speed lines for single-digit billions of pounds/dollars tells you everything about wages, and compensation for home owners on the route.
- iso1631 6y ago
  I've seen some complaints about HS1, but not from people in Kent - just from NIMBYs in Buckinghamshire saying "HS1 was rubbish and nobody uses it and everyone uses it to go to London every dy so the towns it serves are now run down ghost towns"

switch007 6y ago

I wonder how much it will fetch on eBay. One of the Channel Tunnel boring machines sold for £39,999 in 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm

dogma1138 6y ago
It’s pretty common to have these machines buried in the tunnel after they done the digging. These are usually custom made one off machines that don’t have much of a life span beyond each project. That was on some level the whole point of the boring company Elon said it was crazy that these machines were discarded or sold for scrap. That said since recovering them would be much easier than landing a rocket I don’t know if there is actually financial motivation to recover them. When they are sold they are usually sold for their effective scrap weight (metal worth minus the cost of getting them offsite and breaking them down).
- baybal2 6y ago
  When the cost of machinery is a rounding error in the cost of the entire project... Yeah, I don't like that thinking.
  - taneq 6y ago
    Why not? It just means that the main expenses of the project are labour, materials, energy, etc. I don’t imagine the paint for the Sistine Chapel ceiling cost much compared with the cost of painting it.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      If recovered, the cost of the machine would likely repay the recovery operation many times over even if scrapped. What I don't like is the thinking of people who rush for the sign off, and paycheck date.
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago

buro9 6y ago

The crazy bit of this is that this is where the tunnels will be built: https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route-map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849 https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route-map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849 "from just inside the M25 to South Heath in Buckinghamshire" South Heath is here https://www.google.com/maps/place/South+Heath/@51.7054459,-0.6893411,11.37z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x48765e6963dc0a2d:0xe00016c272f1065e!2sSouth+Heath,+Great+Missenden!3b1!8m2!3d51.710744!4d-0.6866789!3m4!1s0x48765e6ec734927d:0xdc5eb80894c2f27c!8m2!3d51.7092146!4d-0.682869 https://www.google.com/maps/place/South+Heath/@51.7054459,-0... We are going to tunnel through open country due to the politics and objections from land owners. It is no surprise that the costs have risen.

londons_explore 6y ago
It's about time we just did a big nationwide vote for big infrastructure projects. Voters can decide if they want to pay an extra few billion pounds or to keep a little farm village.
- Already__Taken 6y ago
  That's all very well and good until it's your village. And you know full well it's never the Lords and Lady's in this country at risk of their shooting grounds getting a train through it.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The massive viaducts at Cullen in Scotland were apparently required to route the railway away from Cullen House: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray
- growlist 6y ago
  These smaller countryside settlements are precious and wonderful to me. Our towns and especially cities are rapidly losing their individual character with the influence of globalised media, mass immigration and an increasingly commodified and vapid consumerist culture. Please don't will the destruction of the few small pockets of distinctively English heritage we have left.

BlackVanilla 6y ago

In the media, there's been a focus on HS2's ever-growing budget, bulldozing land, and massive delays. These are significant, if not more so than what I'm about to talk about, but it's worth focusing on an aspect frequently not considered: the positive externality of improving human skills. With Crossrail (now Elizabeth Line) nearly finished under London, the Channel Tunnel, and now HS2 tunnels, the UK is exposing some of its workforce to some great tunnelling projects. The skill these workers must have aquired working on these large-scale tunnelling projects is impressive. The UK could even be developing a comparative advantage in tunnelling. It doesn't solve the factors outlined at the start, but it's a side affect few discuss in public discourse when deciding to fund an infrastructure project like HS2. The positive externalities of SpaceX's work or of NASA's work are not limited to the end goal (the fact we fly something to space), it's also that now we have more people with better skills. This is something that the media doesn't focus on when big breakthroughs happen, whether privately- or publicly-funded, and I think that's a shame.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
Upvoted. The backlash against HS2 is really annoying, yes it is expensive and some people think it won't benefit the country much - but you covered the reasons why we should be continuing with this project.
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  HS2 only connects together the largest city, the second largest city, the third largest city, the fourth largest city, the fifth largest city, the seventh largest city and the ninth largest city in the UK together on a single branched train line which will allow travel between them within an hour and a half. Who cares about such economic frivolity!
  - BlackVanilla 6y ago
    This highlights a flaw with the UK's infrastructure projects. The UK is focused on connecting cities with cities, not connection within cities and towns. Asides from London, plenty of cities and big towns suffer from poor public transport. Getting from one side of town to another without a car should not be a struggle. Right now, I think this should be prioritised above city to city public transport links.

BlackVanilla 6y ago

Who knew? You can vote on the names these two TBMs will be given. https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/ https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/

chrisseaton 6y ago
At least it's from a set of sensible names this time, not open to witless joke names.
- Xylakant 6y ago
  Yours and my sense of humor obviously differ, but when I observe the fun people have every year when someone stumbles over the Scottish Trunk Road Gritter Tracker (1), I think that witless joke names serve as a quite good way to have folks relate to their public infrastructure. That said, let me have a quick look where Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney ended up parking for summer. (1) http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2de764a9303848ffb9a4cac0bd0b1aab http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?...

supernova87a 6y ago

As alluded to by another comment below, having even a small specialized workforce trained and skilled in building rail is something that's desireable. Maybe even a topic of national security (or at least national competence). However, people need practice and real projects to stay skilled. And if a country only has 1 major rail project every 30 years, you're not going to be able to maintain that workforce or national skill -- unless that workforce finds projects outside the country to work on. (Or attract people to that field. Maintenance alone is not very interesting to many people.) It becomes a very boom/bust talent pool that loses its sharpness because of lack of wood to chop. I think advanced countries will find these kinds of skills (rail being just an example) attritting to developing countries like China, India where growth means that 10,000 rail-specific engineers have places to practice their skills on real projects that keep on coming. They stamp out an elevated rail bridge every month. First you see the expertise moving to the private sector because government no longer engages in the building of infrastructure. Then even the private sector talent moves overseas to follow the projects. Even an org like Parsons almost cannot compete with this. And that's why you see rail projects going to such countries' companies as top bidders possessing the necessary expertise -- ready to go right now, rather than taking 1 year to even find the people. Talent and ability follows the need (and money) for it.

madengr 6y ago

Back in the cold war, there was a proposal to criss-cross the USA with underground tunnels carrying train-launched ICBMs. Would make for a great post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

rleigh 6y ago
Iain Banks' "Consider Phlebas" has a great section of the story in such a setting.

jessriedel 6y ago

How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs? Given the tight connection to government buyers and cost-plus incentives, is the industry plausibly as sclerotic as the rocket industry was pre-SpaceX? Or are there good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than they already are?

gsnedders 6y ago
> How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs? There's a bunch. > Or are there good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than they already are? Mostly that tunnelling through unknown ground is risky (even if you're taken samples, you don't know what every meter is like!) so you don't want to move too fast, you're having to move vast quantities of spoil out, you need to keep the cutting blades cool (they're under immense pressure and friction so they get _hot_, and cooling is hard when you're in a confined tunnel) and we only have materials so hard (so you can't speed up the cutting head)…