He was joined by Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy to meet engineers and construction workers and to hear more about tunnelling preparations for Europe’s largest civil engineering project.
Construction of Crossrail’s western tunnels between Royal Oak and Farringdon is being undertaken by an Anglo/Dutch/Spanish joint venture of Kier Construction, BAM Nuttall and Ferrovial Agroman.
The first TBM will be launched next month into one of the twin bores at Royal Oak Portal tunnelling east towards Farringdon. This TBM is assembled and ready for testing.
A second TBM, now being re-assembled, will launch from Royal Oak Portal in April through the second bore.
At more than 140 metres long and weighing around 1,000 tonnes the TBMs will travel 6.4km eastbound under London via Paddington, Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road before reaching Farringdon in 2013.
This will be followed later this year by the launch of a further two TBMs from Limmo Peninsular in the Royal Docks that will travel a total of 8.3km towards Farringdon via Canary Wharf, Whitechapel and Liverpool Street.
Towards the end of 2012 another two TBMs will begin construction of the southeast section of the route, launching from Plumstead portal in the south-east and travelling a total of 2.6km to construct the Thames Tunnel. Two TBMs will also be used to create nearly 3km of twin-bore tunnels between Stepney Green and Pudding Mill Lane.
A total of eight tunnel boring machines (TBMs) will construct 21km of new twin-bore tunnels (42km in total). 
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