The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway [DVD]

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This series follows a team of more than ten thousand engineers and construction workers close up as they race to build a brand-new subterranean railway under London Crossrail London s new Underground. Costing almost fifteen billion pounds and taking ten years to build, it s the biggest engineering project in Europe. The challenges facing the team are immense from digging out forty-two kilometres of tunnels to constructing ten vast new stations all while keeping London moving. Urban Heart Surgery As they burrow the forty-two kilometres of tunnels, engineers must battle to make sure that listed buildings don t crack, London Underground trains keep running, roads don t shut and the City stays in business. Crucially, they must drive one of their gigantic 1,000-tonne tunnel boring machines through a tiny gap in the congested underbelly of Tottenham Court Road station without the passengers on the Tube platforms below knowing they are there. Tunnels Under the Thames Linda Miller, an engineer more at home building space launch complexes at Cape Canaveral, battles to rebuild a Victorian tunnel under the Royal Docks in London s East End. Meanwhile a British tunnelling dynasty the Bermingham family follow in the footsteps of the original her-son team of Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel to build a brand new tunnel under the River Thames. Platforms and Plague Pits A team battles to put together the giant jigsaw that will become a cathedral-sized station at Canary Wharf. It s so big they have to build it in a dock and underwater. Its architect-designed roof is so complicated it comes in a kit of over 2,500 pieces. As engineers carve out the underground caverns that will become the new stations, they hit on some gruesome discoveries of London s past.