The first of over 83,000 tunnel segments that will be used to form the tunnels under London for HS2 trains has been cast in an old oil rig factory in Hartlepool.
STRABAG factory in Hartlepool begins casting tunnel segments for HS2 (c) HS2
Strabag is part of a consortium including Skanska and Costain that was awarded the design and construction of the Euston Tunnels and Approaches and the Northolt Tunnels in April 2020.
The factory was built by Strabag in Hartlepool docks, which was chosen because of its connections by rail and sea. The team have taken an old oil rig fabrication site and developed a modern precast concrete segment ring factory, creating over 100 jobs for local people. In addition, by reinstating the previously disused railhead and platform at the site, segments can now be transported by rail from Hartlepool to HS2’s London logistics hub near Willesden Junction in London and straight to the tunnels’ portals.
By using rail instead of road to move over 83,000 segments, they say that they’ll avoid over 56,000 lorry journeys and reduce CO2 emissions by three-quarters of what it would have been with road transport.
The freight trains between Hartlepool and London will travel via York, Doncaster, Peterborough, and Harringay, where they use a junction to get onto the London Overground line to Gospel Oak, and on to Willesden Junction .
If you want to see future railway tunnels arriving in London — then you can track them on Realtime Trains, look for departures from Hartlepool Dock Area.
The factory is inside a huge hangar building next to the railway connection.
This shows that projects like this aren’t “London centric” and provide jobs all over the country and more needs to be done to get that message out.