Construction of westbound cavern at Stepney Green complete Thursday 15th August 2013 By Lewis Evans

Crossrail's eastern running tunnels team has marked another major milestone this week with the completion of the westbound cavern 40m below ground in Stepney Green, just 3 months after the completion of the eastbound cavern earlier this year.

The Stepney Green caverns are some of the largest mined caverns ever constructed in Europe using a tunnelling technique called Sprayed Concrete Lining. They are approximately 50m long, 17m wide and 15m high.

Two tunnel boring machines, Victoria and Elizabeth, will pass through the cavern later this year on their way to Farringdon via Canary Wharf, Whitechapel and Liverpool Street stations.

Stepney Green will have a critical role to play when Crossrail opens; it is where the railway divides with the southeast spur running underground to Plumstead and then onto Abbey Wood via Canary Wharf and the north east spur running underground to Pudding Mill and then on to Shenfield in Essex.

NOTE: Many features on the website require Javascript. You can enable it via your browser's preference settings.