The Victoria Dock Portal will be where the new Crossrail trains move between existing surface railway into Crossrail’s new tunnelled section beneath central London. Major engineering works were carried out over the Christmas period with 200 workers moving and renewing 420m of Docklands Light Railway (DLR) tracks to create space for the construction of Victoria Dock Portal.
With the DLR tracks moved, work is now under way to build the foundations for the portal structure, close to Custom House DLR station. More than 700 piles will be driven into the ground to form the foundations for the 20m-wide, 371m-long and 13m-deep portal.
Once the first section of the Victoria Dock Portal has been completed in early 2014, a single tunnel boring machine (TBM) will be launched in summer 2014 from the Limmo Peninsula site near Canning Town, tunnelling its way towards Victoria Dock Portal where it will break-through later in 2014. The TBM will then be taken back to the Limmo site so that it can create a second adjacent tunnel to Victoria Dock Portal, completing a 1km section of the Crossrail route. Once the TBM has departed Victoria Dock, the construction of the remaining sections of the portal structure will continue and will be completed in 2015.
Crossrail central area director Bill Tucker said: “The Victoria Dock Portal will be a key part of the Crossrail route, forming a gateway from the existing surface railway in east London into the new tunnels being built beneath central London. The start of construction at Victoria Dock is an important further step towards delivering lasting transport improvements for east London.”
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