
First photo of HS2 tunnel boring machines - edward
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/06/04/first-photo-of-hs2-tunnel-boring-machines/
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BlackVanilla
In the media, there's been a focus on HS2's ever-growing budget, bulldozing
land, and massive delays. These are significant, if not more so than what I'm
about to talk about, but it's worth focusing on an aspect frequently not
considered: the positive externality of improving human skills.

With Crossrail (now Elizabeth Line) nearly finished under London, the Channel
Tunnel, and now HS2 tunnels, the UK is exposing some of its workforce to some
great tunnelling projects. The skill these workers must have aquired working
on these large-scale tunnelling projects is impressive. The UK could even be
developing a comparative advantage in tunnelling.

It doesn't solve the factors outlined at the start, but it's a side affect few
discuss in public discourse when deciding to fund an infrastructure project
like HS2. The positive externalities of SpaceX's work or of NASA's work are
not limited to the end goal (the fact we fly something to space), it's also
that now we have more people with better skills. This is something that the
media doesn't focus on when big breakthroughs happen, whether privately- or
publicly-funded, and I think that's a shame.

~~~
acallaghan
I'm mainly annoyed about the rollout of HS2 because of the government's
insistence of all projects starting/ending in London. A new trans-pennine rail
tunnel from Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield under the peaks, and Manc-Leeds-
Hull would add vastly more value than a faster connection between already well
connected cities. This is planned for 'HS3', but that could be 40+ years off
at this rate.

The large-scale projects need to srart every 10 years or so... the UK is in
desperate need of non-car infrastructure if it wants to be carbon zero by
2050.

~~~
chrisseaton
> A new trans-pennine rail tunnel from Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield under
> the peaks, and Manc-Leeds-Hull would add vastly more value than a faster
> connection between already well connected cities.

I live in this area and do these routes frequently and yes I'd love them to be
more connected too.

But realistically, like almost everyone else in the country almost all my
travel is to and from London, because that's where most things happen.

~~~
reallydontask
Could this not be because of lack of said transport links on an East-West
Axis?

I can't help but feel that if the trains had dedicated business carriages with
reliable internet access, nobody would be all that fussed to get to London 20
to 30 minutes quicker

edit:

I don't mean First Class. I mean something like an all tables carriage or even
just a fold down tables that can easily accommodate a 17" laptop (even if not
many people have them, the space is what I'm after)

~~~
logifail
> nobody would be all that fussed to get to London 20 to 30 minutes quicker

I don't think people are that fussed. From QZ.com[0]:

"In the mornings, a train leaves London for Birmingham approximately every 15
minutes. The 7:23 am fast train leaves Euston and arrives at New Street
station one hour and 22 minutes later, at 8:45 am—this would be shortened to
45 minutes with HS2.

The train is full of commuters and business travelers with a confusing range
of opinions about HS2. Most point out that the journey from London to
Birmingham is already quite fast. 'We have this train, so I question why we
need it,' says Ben Brown, who commutes to Birmingham two to three times a
week. 'It’s not as if the train that we’re in…is particularly slow,' echoes
Damon Lacey, a human relations consultant from Portsmouth."

[0] [https://qz.com/1803712/birmingham-shows-why-the-uks-
hs2-plan...](https://qz.com/1803712/birmingham-shows-why-the-uks-hs2-plans-
are-so-controversial/)

~~~
diroussel
Yes it goes to Birmingham, but it's not for Birmingham. It just so happens
that Birminghan is on the route to the North.

~~~
M2Ys4U
Birmingham will definitely benefit as it will mean that more local and
regional trains can use the WCML when intercity trains move over to HS2.

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buro9
The crazy bit of this is that this is where the tunnels will be built:
[https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route-
map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849](https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route-
map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849)

"from just inside the M25 to South Heath in Buckinghamshire"

South Heath is here
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/South+Heath/@51.7054459,-0...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/South+Heath/@51.7054459,-0.6893411,11.37z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x48765e6963dc0a2d:0xe00016c272f1065e!2sSouth+Heath,+Great+Missenden!3b1!8m2!3d51.710744!4d-0.6866789!3m4!1s0x48765e6ec734927d:0xdc5eb80894c2f27c!8m2!3d51.7092146!4d-0.682869)

We are going to tunnel through open country due to the politics and objections
from land owners.

It is no surprise that the costs have risen.

~~~
londons_explore
It's about time we just did a big nationwide vote for big infrastructure
projects.

Voters can decide if they want to pay an extra few billion pounds or to keep a
little farm village.

~~~
Already__Taken
That's all very well and good until it's your village.

And you know full well it's never the Lords and Lady's in this country at risk
of their shooting grounds getting a train through it.

~~~
arethuza
The massive viaducts at Cullen in Scotland were apparently required to route
the railway away from Cullen House:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray)

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supernova87a
As alluded to by another comment below, having even a small specialized
workforce trained and skilled in building rail is something that's desireable.
Maybe even a topic of national security (or at least national competence).

However, people need _practice_ and real projects to stay skilled. And if a
country only has 1 major rail project every 30 years, you're not going to be
able to maintain that workforce or national skill -- unless that workforce
finds projects outside the country to work on. (Or attract people to that
field. Maintenance alone is not very interesting to many people.) It becomes a
very boom/bust talent pool that loses its sharpness because of lack of wood to
chop.

I think advanced countries will find these kinds of skills (rail being just an
example) attritting to developing countries like China, India where growth
means that 10,000 _rail-specific_ engineers have places to practice their
skills on real projects that keep on coming. They stamp out an elevated rail
bridge every month.

First you see the expertise moving to the private sector because government no
longer engages in the building of infrastructure. Then even the private sector
talent moves overseas to follow the projects. Even an org like Parsons almost
cannot compete with this. And that's why you see rail projects going to such
countries' companies as top bidders possessing the necessary expertise --
ready to go right now, rather than taking 1 year to even find the people.

Talent and ability follows the need (and money) for it.

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switch007
I wonder how much it will fetch on eBay. One of the Channel Tunnel boring
machines sold for £39,999 in 2004.
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm)

~~~
dogma1138
It’s pretty common to have these machines buried in the tunnel after they done
the digging.

These are usually custom made one off machines that don’t have much of a life
span beyond each project.

That was on some level the whole point of the boring company Elon said it was
crazy that these machines were discarded or sold for scrap.

That said since recovering them would be much easier than landing a rocket I
don’t know if there is actually financial motivation to recover them.

When they are sold they are usually sold for their effective scrap weight
(metal worth minus the cost of getting them offsite and breaking them down).

~~~
baybal2
When the cost of machinery is a rounding error in the cost of the entire
project...

Yeah, I don't like that thinking.

~~~
taneq
Why not? It just means that the main expenses of the project are labour,
materials, energy, etc.

I don’t imagine the paint for the Sistine Chapel ceiling cost much compared
with the cost of painting it.

~~~
baybal2
If recovered, the cost of the machine would likely repay the recovery
operation many times over even if scrapped.

What I don't like is the thinking of people who rush for the sign off, and
paycheck date.

~~~
dogma1138
The cost of those machines failing or worse getting stuck is enormous, they
have very specific life span and are pretty much discarded even mid project if
they dug past their mileage.

These machines are also custom built for the diameter, soil type and probably
a plethora of other variables so it’s unlikely that you could reuse them.

They are also not built to be recovered and reused from what I gather which
complicates things further.

~~~
baybal2
Hmmm, doesn't seem so at all

~~~
dogma1138
Doesn’t seem what?

~~~
baybal2
Doesn't seem real.

What's there to break? The cutters on the face of the TBM, and bearings would
likely be replaced few times during boring. Aside from that, what's there to
break? Hydraulics is sure to outlast even the longest boring.

Pumps, gearing, sealing, etc should all be easily replaceable.

~~~
dogma1138
There have been plenty to cases where these things have broken down which
caused years of delays and usually another tunnel had to be dug to get them
free, sometimes they changed the path of the original tunnel to circumvent
them where it was possible and more cost effective.

These machines are constantly serviced and aren’t operated one minute past
their life spans.

I really don’t think you understand how many hours these things operate
for....

To put things into perspective machines have a single digit meters per hours
top speed and not high single digits to boot, and if you are digging in rock
you are looking at sub meter per hour figures.

If you have a source to contradict this I’ll be happy to read it but honestly
every source from articles to documentaries pretty much paints the same
picture these machines aren’t worth their weight in scrap once they are done
with.

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barking
Extract from the UK yellow pages from years past:

 _Boring \- see Civil Engineers_

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tonyedgecombe
It's amazing the expense we are going to to avoid building a railway across a
few rich peoples land. Not that this is new, it happened during the steam age.

~~~
Wintamute
Yes it's expensive, but a future where most infrastructure is underground,
from mass transit to power and communications, allowing nature to return to
the surface, for future generations to enjoy seems like a worthy goal imo,
even just on the aesthetic merits, saying nothing of the ecology. Just a damn
shame we couldn't build these boring machines in the UK, and funnel the
spending into the domestic economy.

~~~
TomJansen
Wholeheartedly agree! Giving back to nature is a very good goal. In the
Netherlands, there is a growing problem of the "boxyfication" of the landscape
(verdozing van het landschap), meaning that because of the growing trend of
internet shopping, more and more warehouses and distribution centers are being
built in the iconic farm landscape. Moving these structurally simple buildings
underground would allow for more space for nature in the already densely
populated country

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BlackVanilla
Who knew? You can vote on the names these two TBMs will be given.
[https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/](https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/)

~~~
chrisseaton
At least it's from a set of sensible names this time, not open to witless joke
names.

~~~
Xylakant
Yours and my sense of humor obviously differ, but when I observe the fun
people have every year when someone stumbles over the Scottish Trunk Road
Gritter Tracker (1), I think that witless joke names serve as a quite good way
to have folks relate to their public infrastructure. That said, let me have a
quick look where Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney ended up
parking for summer.

(1)
[http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?...](http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2de764a9303848ffb9a4cac0bd0b1aab)

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Reason077
The cutter head interface is appropriately keyed. No chance of putting the
square peg in the round hole!

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jessriedel
How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs? Given the tight
connection to government buyers and cost-plus incentives, is the industry
plausibly as sclerotic as the rocket industry was pre-SpaceX? Or are there
good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than they already
are?

~~~
gsnedders
> How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs?

There's a bunch.

> Or are there good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than
> they already are?

Mostly that tunnelling through unknown ground is risky (even if you're taken
samples, you don't know what every meter is like!) so you don't want to move
too fast, you're having to move vast quantities of spoil out, you need to keep
the cutting blades cool (they're under immense pressure and friction so they
get _hot_, and cooling is hard when you're in a confined tunnel) and we only
have materials so hard (so you can't speed up the cutting head)…

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madengr
Back in the cold war, there was a proposal to criss-cross the USA with
underground tunnels carrying train-launched ICBMs. Would make for a great
post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

~~~
rleigh
Iain Banks' "Consider Phlebas" has a great section of the story in such a
setting.

