Main tunnel junction secondary lined at Heathwall

Secondary lining of the junction where the main super sewer meets the connection tunnel beneath Heathwall Pumping Station has been completed.

It is the last of six junctions on the central section of the main tunnel to be lined. There are now just 300 metres left to line of this section of the eastbound tunnel.

In the next few weeks, pouring of the eastbound adit – the space where Tunnel Boring Machine Ursula launched from near the bottom of the nearby Kirtling Street shaft in Battersea will commence.

At the bottom of the shaft itself, a mass backfilling operation has also begun to fill in the “basement” under the steel operating deck where the conveyor mechanisms were housed during tunnelling to remove excavated material for transport away from site by barge on the River Thames.

Once the adit is complete, the ‘shutters’ – the machines used to secondary line the tunnel will head back down the tunnel to Blackfriars Bridge in readiness for secondary lining the last section of central tunnel between Blackfriars and the Chambers Wharf site in Bermondsey