BBCIt is loud, dusty and 30 m (approximately 98 feet) underground: this is the domain of the London miner.
We are in a tunnel drilling machine (TBM) within the huge Northholt tunnels of High Speed Two.
These tunnel hole machines are part of a tunnel rebirth that is creating a new, mainly hidden, London.
They are used in the leg to pierce the Silvertown, crossrail tunnel, energy tunnels in northern London and Thames or Super Seven tideway, as well as the Canal’s tunnel.
Operation of these machines are teams of miners that come from all over the world and pass from one project to another.
Miners are a quite modest lot and do not really think that what they are doing is unusual.
Changes of anything between seven and 12 hours work. The TB does not stop, which crawls at 16 m (approximately 52 feet) a day and works 24 hours, 7 days a week.
Graham Clark and his son Liam are Kent.
Graham says he first got into mining due to the channel tunnel: “They asked me if I wanted to go through the tunnel as a local worker.”
He says since then, after receiving six years of work in the channel tunnel.
Liam says his father put him in that.
“My old man put me in the game. I just finished school, I received a phone call that was working at that time, he said:” You correct, you start with me tomorrow. ”
“And that was all. He worked away from home since then. For the last 14 years or so.”
Graham says it is a rewarding race.
“It’s a challenge and it can be hard work, but you have a good crew and everyone works together and everyone helps each other. And they work for the team, different challenges, but it is good.
“The miners are from everyone.”
Jack Doherty, like many miners, is from Donegal in Ireland. He says it is very similar to another construction site.
“There is a large community of tunnels at home where I am,” Jack said.
“Many of the young boys here, most of their parents are in it. It runs a bit in families where I am anyway.”
In the mouth of each tunnel there is a small sanctuary for Santa Barbara, the patron saint of the miners.
To get to the boring machine, we are driven for an hour in a buggy in the tunnel. It can quickly heat there.
Northholt tunnels are currently 93% complete.
We visited when they were hours since they broke up to the axis in Greenford.
Four machines were home on the axis from the southeast and northwest with huge conveyor tapes that take the loot along the tunnel.
These machines will be transported and dismantled.
‘Surprising’ geology
Michael Greiner is the tunnel chief in SCS JV.
I previously with him at the beginning of the project where he told me that “many things have gone well, but in the tunnel there are also exciting things” like “quite heterogeneous” geology.
He said: “We are undermining throughout the London basin and, therefore, the geology of Chalk, Flint, a mixture of sand.
“Geology has some surprises, so you never know exactly what is happening underground, so it kept us busy.”
TBM are enormously complex pieces of kit and soil conditions have captivated some problems.
Below the Rugby Ruislip club, what cautious Great clouds of foam To end in rugby launches that had to close.
At that time, Jatin Radia, the president of the Rugby Club told us: “The reality is that it causes more concerns because you have local residents, members of the local rugby club. Naturally they care about what is happening and asking:” Is that so? “
The drilling was continuous after a roast.
Next Euston detention?
In most of anyone on the ground, no idea of what had been happening under them, according to the Head of Delivery of HS2, James Leeming.
“Many people living in western London, we can have extracted 25m (approximately 82 feet) under their homes and places and their streets and would not have the wisest of what was happening here,” he said.
He thinks that the success of the tunnel so far is a good omen to complete the tunnel to Euston.
“It is really positive to achieve what we have done in this section of the tunnel, but we still have a lot of doing both this year and goes to one of the most productive years in civil contracts.
“This really puts us in a good place to deliver the Euston tunnel.”
