Thames Tideway Tunnel in Fulham

I've blogged before about the Thames Tideway Tunnel, aka the Super Sewer, and at the time of those posts it was mostly in the planning stage, with debates about where the access sites should be. 

This proved controversial - for example the one planned in Putney at Barn Elms was strongly objected to (including by round the world sailor Tracy Edwards) and so another site in Fulham was chosen instead.

Now work is progressing rapidly and there was an open day at the Carnwath Road site where you could have a look round and talk to engineers.

The most visible sign of progress is the huge "acoustic shed" (top and bottom pics, before cladding was put on) which is designed to keep the noise down when drilling gets serious to allow 24 hour operation. Within it will be a shaft down which the tunnel boring machine (TBM) will be lowered.

This can be seen in the model below: the real thing is 150m long with 8m diameter head, part of a set of TBMs to drill the 25km of tunnelling required:

This will generate a lot of waste and rather than hammering the local roads will be taken out by boat with two new tugs on order called Felix and Christian to handle the lighters from the Fulham site.

When the work is complete there'll be a small public park where the shaft end of the acoustic shed is at the moment plus the quay side for the lighters will remain as a protected wharf.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the works progresses!