London’s Northern Line tunnelling to start in March

The Joint venture between Ferrovial Agroman and Laing O’Rouke has been given the go ahead to start work on tunnelling the Northern Line Tube extension between Kennington and Battersea in March 2017. This venture hopes to make up for lost time on the project, since work was originally planned to start in Summer 2016 and all works need to be completed by 2020. Over the next three months, the contractors will create two 77m long tunnels to the east of the Battersea Station site, from which the tunnel boring machines will be launched. Each of these 65-tonne machines will create two 3.2km underground tunnels with a depth of 26m. It is estimated that more than 300,000 tonnes of earth will be excavated, which will be transported to Goshems Farm in Essex to create arable farmland.