HS2 breaks through at Old Oak Common, 45 minutes from Birmingham Curzon Street

HS2 has broken through into its new Old Oak Common station in west London, linking what will be the line's first London station to the railway that will run to Birmingham Curzon Street in around 45 minutes.

Tunnel mining teams excavated 100,000 tonnes of material, roughly the weight of 14,000 double-decker London buses, to reach the station box. The breakthrough creates an 8.8-mile link between Old Oak Common and the West Ruislip tunnel portal on the north-western edge of the capital.

45 minutes to Curzon Street

Once trains are running, passengers will be able to travel the roughly 140 miles from Old Oak Common to Birmingham Curzon Street in around 45 minutes, and HS2 says the railway will more than double peak-time seat capacity between London and Birmingham.

Old Oak Common will be one of the best-connected rail hubs in the country, where HS2 meets the Elizabeth line, Great Western Railway and the Heathrow Express, opening up quick connections to Heathrow and the west of England for passengers from Birmingham.

A "Jenga-style" breakthrough

Unlike most of HS2's tunnels, which were dug with giant tunnel boring machines, these two 360-metre sections were mined entirely through London clay using excavators and lined with sprayed concrete. The final breakthrough used a method not previously tried on HS2: the tunnel's dividing wall was cut into blocks and pushed out, "Jenga-style", from the station side back into the finished tunnel.

All 100,000 tonnes of excavated material has been taken to reuse projects in the UK.

"A major milestone"

The Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, said: "This is a major milestone for HS2, bringing us a step closer to delivering a world-class transport hub at Old Oak Common and connecting London to Britain's new high-speed railway."

HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild said the breakthrough "helps bring us a step closer to achieving our challenging ambition of delivering the railway from Old Oak Common to Birmingham Curzon Street by 2037, or earlier."

Progress along the line

HS2 says all deep bore tunnelling between London and Birmingham is now complete, and more than 80% of major structures are under construction or finished. In 2025/26 it delivered more than 10% more construction than planned and hit six major milestones ahead of schedule.

Meanwhile, the two tunnel boring machines launched from Old Oak Common at the start of 2026 are continuing their 4.5-mile journeys towards the future central London terminus at Euston, and are expected to arrive in mid-2027.

Closer to home, work continues on the Curzon Street station site and on the viaducts carrying the line over the M6 and M42 east of the city. For Birmingham, every milestone in London brings the day of a 45-minute journey to the capital's edge a little closer.