After completing the 5.6km first bored tunnel of the UK’s HS2 Bromford Tunnel, linking North Warwickshire and Birmingham, HS2’s Herrenknecht TBM Mary Ann – operated by section contractor Balfour Beatty Vinci (BBV) – is now being stripped down ready to take on her next tunnelling activity.
The first stage in the process to disassemble the 1,600-tonne machine saw the TBM’s 8.62m diameter cutterhead being lifted using a 700-tonne crawler crane.
The cutterhead, which weighs 120 tonnes, was lifted out of the 22m deep tunnel portal at Washwood Heath in north Birmingham in just 90 minutes. The operation took place on Friday, 30thMay 2025.
A team of 15 engineers will spend the next three months dismantling the 125m long machine, next to the portal in Washwood Heath, before it is returned to Herrenknecht in Germany.
Mary Ann was launched in August 2023 and spent 652 days and nights working underground to excavate the first bore of the Bromford Tunnel, and is expected now to be refurbished and adapted ready to meet the technical requirements of its next tunnelling mission.
Sister TBM Elizabeth was launched in March 2024 and is currently boring the second section of the Bromford Tunnel with breakthrough expected later this year.
The post HS2’s Mary Ann removed from Bromford Tunnel portal appeared first on The Tunnelling Journal.
