The UK government has confirmed funding to initiate tunnelling work to bring the High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project to London Euston station, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in her Budget speech.
The tunnelling will be a critical part of the new high-speed railway link between Birmingham and London, extending the HS2 line from its planned terminus at Old Oak Common to Euston station near central London. The extension aims to connect the new rail network directly to the heart of the capital.
The extension to Euston will require significant tunnelling and infrastructure work. Construction will include the “Euston Approaches,” a section of the railway designed to link the line from Parkway and Hampstead Road in Camden to Euston station.
The construction of a wider and deeper segment, known as the “Euston Throat,” has also faced delays. This particular work is intended to create space to facilitate the high-speed line’s approach to Euston.
Altogether, approximately 105km of tunnels are being built between London and the West Midlands, requiring the excavation of around 130 million tonnes of earth. This volume is large enough to fill Wembley Stadium 15 times.
The construction of these tunnels involves 10 giant tunnel boring machines (TBMs), working simultaneously across five separate drives to create HS2’s twin-bore tunnels between London and the West Midlands.
The tunnelling sections include the Euston Tunnel, which extends 7.3km from the main rail line to Euston station, and the Northolt Tunnel, which runs 13.6km between the Old Oak Common site and Northolt, among others.
The Chiltern Tunnel, which spans 16km, will form the largest continuous section of tunnel on the line.
In total, high-speed trains will travel through approximately 44.1km of twin-bore tunnels, representing nearly one-fifth of the entire 225.3km route from London to Birmingham.
