Crossrail will use eight tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to construct the new tunnels under London. These huge machines will work 24 hours a day beneath the streets of London, excavating large volumes of ground and erecting the concrete tunnel lining.

Each machine has a rotating cutter head at the front, and a series of trailers behind, housing all the mechanical and electrical equipment required for the excavation of material.

To construct the 42km of tunnel required for Crossrail the tunnel boring machines will undertake ten individual tunnel drives to construct the 6.2m diameter rail tunnels.

Each TBM weighs approximately 1000 tonnes and will be up to 140m in length with an external diameter of 7.1m. This allows for an inside tunnel diameter of 6.2m once the concrete tunnel segments are in place.

Each TBM will be operated by a ‘tunnel gang’ comprising of around twenty people – twelve people on the TBM itself and eight people working from the rear of the machine to above ground.

To find out more about our tunnel boring machines visit:
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/tunnelling/
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/

28 Comments

  1. I needed this to get over my fear of tunnel collapse. I did the same thing to get over my fear of flying lol

  2. I couldn’t even watch the end of this ridiculous animated video! Interesting that one of these machines is apparently imbedded in the Earth now near the Chunnel and the other sold on eBay! Why are they not on display if this was such an amazing venture. Britain can’t even sort out its own rail system so how was this even built in today’s world! So tunnels were just build under a major city just like that without anybody being affected by the noise or the rumbling …. the Chunnel links with the underground. The ground wasn’t shaken affecting buildings above from these monstrous machines? They just rammed through solid earth underneath where people live? In a logical world they would have tried this on a smaller scale first like under the Thames but I can’t even comprehend how they would do that. Where is all the waste material now from the Chunnel, Britain isn’t that big? And knowing human mentality it would have been dumped near by somewhere. The whole thing makes no logical sense.

  3. Just out of interest, why are the tunnel boring machines named after women and who came up with the names

  4. So instead of using thousands of humans it on needs a few machines the future of humans working will end in a few hundred years

  5. I respect everyone who were involved in this. Seriously the best piece that I've ever seen on YouTube. HATS OFF TO YOU ALL! LOVE YOUR VIDEOS!❤️❤️🥰

  6. এই মেশিন বাংলাদেশের সেনাবাহিনী র মধ্যেমেই থাকার একান্ত দরকার বাংলাদেশ সরকারের উচিত ফযোজন আছে বাংলাদেশ জন্য জরুরী ভিত্তিতে দরকার।

  7. Just Imagine These TBM manufacturers Collaboration with Commercial 3D Printers Manufacturer's.. they will create something Magnificent 🙌😎

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