New tunnelling machine joins three others digging high-speed line under London 

High speed rail needs to be extended at least as far north as Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Eastern Leg needs to be restored too. And the Eastern Leg should also be extended to Scotland. The original (now cancelled) plan for HS2 has far to many spurs coming off it and missed the point that people living outside London do not just want to go to London. We need a government that will invest in through stations in English cities. The entire point of building a high speed rail network is to remove InterCity trains from our mainlines, so that those mainlines can be repurposed for local trains that give every English city an improved commuter service (more stopping services per hour, with local capacity becoming more like the services inside Greater London). And, in the South, the cancellation of Euston, should be used as an opportunity to build a through station in London that connects Ediburgh and Glasgow to HS1, so that Eurostar services can run to Scotland, serving a number of English stations in the North West and North East of England and the West and East Midlands. If we don't build the high speed network that does that job now, then we will have to replace bits of it later. The lack of ambition, in Westminster, has already seen Britain build a high speed rail station at Waterloo and then abandon it. We can't afford to be shortsighted and repeat that mistake. Freeing up capacity on our existing mainlines can allow us to run many more stopping services and freight train and will take a lot of cars and lorries off of our roads. It will help us combat climate change and the reduced traffic on roads will speed up journeys for remaining drivers and lower the wear and tear that large vehicles cause to our roads (i.e. better public transport means less potholes to fix). And building a new InterCity network, that can carry more passengers per hour means we can ban domestic flights between South East England and Scotland and also ban international flights between London's airports and Paris. That will also reduce climate change and will clean up the air in our skies and reduce noise nusance for anyone living near an airport. So many things can be improved, if we get a government that stops pretending it's job is to avoid spending money and we tackle the climate emergency in a way that creates engineering jobs and projects that permanantly improves the connectivity between England and Scotland. (And Wales shouldn't be left out either. South Wales and North Wales should both have connections to high speed lines that reduce car and lorry traffic in the country.)

The part linking to the North must be restored, otherwise there's not much point is there?

Perhaps rename it, HS2Bank?

@@DavidShepheard First London Euston Terminal has not been cancelled, after consulting the Building Industry the Government was advised that London OOC is not sutble as a Terminus Station as it will not have the capacity, track or design to be Terminus Station having not been desighned as such from the beginning and were told that if Euston is going to be used at any time now or in the Future the relevent Tunnels need to be bored out between OOC and Euston as once OOC opens as a live station these tunnels could not be constructed and the fact the cost will be even more if it is left, next if they have cancelled the short leg to Manchester they definately wont build it to Scotland plus it won't be worth it as it would takeover 9 hours to get from Edinburgh to Paris, far quicker by Air. The whole idea of HS2 is to divert hi speed trains from Crewe and Birmingham off the Existing WCML to London Euston that is it, it is based on Birmingham that is it with trains running North to Manchester and Scotland and South to London as a Domestic Hi Speed train service.

​@HughTerry69 I think there is still a point to it but if the northern sections were to be implemented its value would be hugely magnified.

They're all employees of sub-contractors, most of which are European companies. So their next project might be a tunnel under the alps, a road tunnel in Norway, a railway in Turkey, wherever their employer sends them next. I do agree that it is a shame, though, that there isn't a nice longlist of projects following up behind HS2 that will keep the engineering expertise within the UK.

The government has no interest in improving our country, their only goals are to make money for lobbyists and win the next election.

HS2 construction work is scheduled to run for many years yet. There's also Hinkley Point, Sizewell C and the New Hospital Programme which will run until 2040 at the earliest despite the politicians claiming it will finish by 2030.

They can be dismantled into portable bits

They have a pit at the other end and are then disassembled lifted out and placed onto lorries by a crane

You know birmingham isn’t in London right?

You do also know that it was supposed to go further and be useful for the north but the government didn't want that?

@@GIOGSWhat? Sure, I think the train line goes in a loop. Of course Birmingham isn't in London, it's 100 miles Northwest. That makes it £1billion per mile and rising, a bargain. 🤔😂🤣

@@chancergordy £100billion? the ignorance on here is stunning

@@mrglide7078 Seems my reply has gone AWOL. Yep, ignorance. £100billion at 2024 estimated cost, nothing like near completion. Meanwhile the costs skyrocket. I'll wager it ends up nearer £150billion.

Try subtitles, and/or interacting with a wider range of people in the real world.

If you think its primary aim is to get to Birmingham faster, then you aren’t very bright. It will massively free up room on the west coast main line for other services including freight, which is desperately needed.

And another example of utter delusion and ignorance.

Couldn't agree more the money spent on this would have been better spent on local infrastructure

​@@1chishanother example of rose tinted glasses

@@davidowen7793 fantastic comment thumbs up 👍🏼

@@davidowen7793 Like what infrastructure spend would achieve what this will achieve over 100 years? Got any examples David?

And all the heavy industrial equipment comes from abroad. We don’t have a manufacturing industry anymore it seems..

You obviously know sod all

High speed rail is the only way to reduce the environmental damage caused by our motorway network and domestic flights. The construction of high speed rail has a one-time environmental cost, while our motorways and airports induce demand that sees those two networks pump out masses of pollution on a daily basis. So the construction cost of those other transport networks is added to constantly. With further investment, we can supply both our high speed rail network and our repurposed mainlines (which need to be repurposed to create local networks around cities that provide train frequencies as good as in London) with green electricity, and that means we can massively reduce the polution and environmental damage caused by moving people and goods around Britain. The only thing that is rediculous is baking car dependency and HGV dependency into British culture.

Nobody wants to use the train, too expensive and you’ll probably get stabbed

R u ignoring all the other railways across the uk, and all the motorways which do the same thing?

There's so much time wasting. There are stories of contracters who are hired to do a simple one hour job who have to book months in advance (while others are waiting for them) to go to site to have someone random supervise them and have others who could do the job just stand and watch because they are contracted to do the job after.

Once the tunnelling starts, it runs continuously 24/7. Tunnelling in gravel takes longer because liquid concrete has to be pumped into the ground to solidify the gravel. Same issue for stabilising shallow foundations to buildings.

@@TrevorWilliams-fq8mg There's not a lot you can do about loose gravel but I'd imagine there isn't that much of it. As for stabilisation of buildings I'd have thought going deeper would help alongside monitoring such buildings and sharing the cost of buttressing the foundations.

​@johnfrancis4401 the gravelbis mainly in East London. But when the company I worked for they had to stabilise the shallow foundations to the old buildings around Soho Square for fear of undermining the foundations with tunnel boring operations. Incidentally it was announced yesterday that tunelling from OOC to Euston will go ahead next year. Presumably the tunnel boring machines are steady ordered

@@TrevorWilliams-fq8mg In my opinion the only people who make money out of infrastructure projects are the lawyers. They have a job to do to protect the interests of their clients, I wouldn't want the Chinese system of the little man gets crushed, but the way to avoid delays, court cases, constantly revised estimates (which seem to double every three years) is to put almost all of the rail track in tunnels. Award the contract in sections that a boring machine can reasonably be expected to cover in two years. Then see which companies deliver and reward them with further work.

Yep, reading your comment certainly was that

If delusion was a comment - this would be it

With a projected capacity of around 14k per direction per hour at up to 205mph - hmmm, bicycles - ROFL!!!