"Underneath the streets of London... ..an army of more than 10,000 engineers is building a brand-new subterranean railway." "OK!" "Crossrail." "We've done the maths, we've checked the maths and we've checked them a third time." "Costing almost £15 billion, it's one of the most ambitious rail projects in Britain since the time of Brunel." "I've been doing civil engineering for 35 or so years." "Even I can't appreciate the scale until I come down here." "Head him up!" "It was a lot easier when I was five years younger and two stone lighter!" "This is a crucial stage of the project for workers digging 42 kilometres of tunnels..." "We only get one chance to build this tunnel so we have to get it right." "When you do these things, you're building a part of history, it's going to be here for a couple of hundred years." "..and constructing ten vast new stations." "I've never built a train station before, never mind one in a dock, underwater." "For almost two years, cameras have been following crews, working cheek-by-jowl with some of London's most distinguished residents." "That's ready to start pumping!" "Facing a constant battle to keep London moving." "This area is where the gridlock is." "Haven't been able to go up and down these streets for four years." "Is Crossrail essential?" "Be wonderful... when it's done." "Constructing Crossrail is like undertaking open-heart surgery on a patient whilst that patient is awake." "This is the exclusive inside story of the epic endeavour to build London's new Underground." "London." "Home to more than eight million people." "The key to keeping everyone moving - the Tube." "A vast network of 270 stations and 250 miles of track." "The London Underground handles more than a billion journeys a year." "All you've got to do is go on the underground system in the morning and you can see it's very crowded." "The forecast for London is one of continued growth, an extra million people in the next 10 or 15 years." "This 150-year-old network struggles to cope with peak demand." "The last new Tube, the Jubilee Line, was opened 35 years ago." "So, today, engineers are building a brand-new underground railway line to help take the strain." "Passing right across London, it's called Crossrail." "It will run overground, from Reading and Heathrow in the west..." "..straight underneath Central London." "It will connect key mainline train stations with the historic Square Mile." "And the new business district." "Before terminating at Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east." "120 kilometres of railway will link to the rest of the Tube and open in 2018." "Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, will be just 28 minutes from London's West End, a journey that currently takes almost an hour on the Tube." "Another eight minutes will whisk you to the booming East End." "An idea born in 1974, it's taken 40 years to get to this point." "And the project isn't without controversy." "It is a big job." "Probably the biggest single rail project that the UK has ever seen." "Pretty much everything we do has an impact on somebody." "The budget for Crossrail is 14.8 billion." "This is taxpayers' money, it's important to remember that." "The other thing I've got to sign here is a £21 million payment authorisation to one of our tunnelling contractors." "And this one's OK." "Building Crossrail in the middle of nowhere would be a big enough technical challenge, but to do that right in the centre of London, with all of the neighbours above and around us, makes it more complex still." "Oxford Street - the shopping Mecca that runs through the heart of London, between Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road." "It's the busiest shopping street in Europe." "200 million people visit the high-end stores here each year." "Engineers must dig the tunnels for Crossrail right underneath this area." "The new train line will soon make it easier for people to travel here." "But building the tunnels below ground without disrupting the stores and shoppers above is no simple task..." "..even for tunnel construction manager Steve Parker..." "Hey, Mario!" "..who has more than 25 years' tunnelling experience." "Oh, well, another glorious day at work." "A lot of people will say that tunnelling is boring." "If you look up in the Yellow Pages "boring", it says, "See civil engineers."" "I am a civil engineer." "Steve is part of a 500-strong team." "And this is the great picture at the Royal Oak Portal and there's our tunnelling team." "A few Hollywood players in there, yes." " Willie, where are you on this?" " There you are." "Ah, he's right in the middle!" "That's Willie Archibald, our tunnel surveyor, and he's got a certain height, and we use that as a unit of measure." "One Willie Archibald is a standard tunnelling unit of measure." "We've got the woolly hat here on the "Where's Wally?" thing, and we move it around from time to time." "Steve, Willie and the team oversee the running of two giant tunnel-boring machines - "TBMs"." "In all, there are eight of these clay-eating monsters." "Each one is a 150 metres long and weighs 1,000 tonnes." "These digging demons can burrow up to 72 metres a day." "In the future I want to be taking my family in this tunnel and say," ""Look, I worked on this."" "I think many tunnellers like to think of themselves as kind of the unsung heroes." "Because it's all underground." "Steve's crew is about to face its toughest test yet." "They must weave one of the tunnelling machines through the tightest point of the entire route, known as "the Eye of the Needle"." "At the east end of Oxford Street lies London Underground's Tottenham Court Road station." "It's where the Tube's Northern Line and Central Line intersect." "Crossrail needs to link into this super-hub." "But digging tunnels here is not easy." "Pipes, cables and sewers crowd the ground." "The Tube's busy Northern Line platforms... ..and two escalators make the earth extremely crowded." "The only option for Steve's team is to drive their tunnelling machine through the tightest of gaps." "85 centimetres above a live, running Tube line and 35 centimetres below the escalators." "It's the closest any Crossrail tunnel will come to the critical infrastructure that keeps London ticking." "At the controls for the tightest drive of them all is shift engineer Ed Batty." "We've been in tricky spots before but nothing where we've had something below us and above us in such a close proximity so, yeah, it's a first for me." "My first job on a TBM, one year and one month I've been down here." "The first six months was a learning curve and now I know what the crack is, basically." "ALARM-LIKE SOUND" "What's going on now?" "That's the TBM belt just about to start and that's the belt that goes all the way out." "Four kilometres of conveyor belt transport the excavated" "London clay out to the surface." "By the end of the project, the tunnelling machines will have mined over six million tonnes of earth - enough to fill Wembley Stadium three times." "Hey, guys." "Lovely morning." "Steve and the team are meeting with London Underground." "We need to make sure the perimeters are absolutely clear so that we avoid some sort of unnecessary response." "The tunnellers can't interrupt Tube services during the 48 hours it will take their machine to pass through the Eye of the Needle." "The tunnel boring machine is passing directly over a platform tunnel." "So our customers will be able see the impact of the tunnel boring machine passing by." "For example, you could have tiles falling off." "If we had customers on the platform who started seeing a lot of fluid come in, they might cause a panic." "If the worst comes to the worst, we might have to evacuate the station." "The only thing we need to discuss is what surveillance regime we're going to have in place." "The team agree to keep a close eye on the platform as the tunnellers pass overhead." "I suppose the real excitement, if you like, or the adrenaline will start if there is an incident." "TANNOY:" "Customers for all stations to Morden should take the next available train and change at Kennington." "Tottenham Court Road station was built in 1900, for the Central London Railway, now the Central Line." "The first line to run all day on Sundays and nicknamed the "Twopenny Tube", it was affordable and proved hugely popular." "The new link made the shops on Oxford Street easier to reach, boosting their profits." "The new stations here will deliver another 120,000 shoppers a day to the streets." "Crossrail engineers have 40 sprawling worksites spread out across London." "Some are little more than shafts allowing access to the new train tunnels growing underground." "Others are giant holes puncturing the landscape, forming the outlines of ten new stations." "The sites in Central London are hemmed in between office blocks, busy shops and roads that never stop." "This makes construction work extra difficult." "One of the pinch points is two stops east of Tottenham Court Road, the site for a new Crossrail station serving Liverpool Street." "In four years' time, this will be a spacious new ticket hall." "But right now there's almost no room for manoeuvre." "We'll get cracking then, yeah?" "Reeeet!" "An elite squad of crane riggers is assembling to clear some space." "Right, this is me team I'll be working with, this is Gurg from down here, so he knows the area." "And this is the Scouser, Lee." "You've probably seen him on Crimewatch." "Cheers, Steve." "I'll never be welcome in Liverpool again, will I?" "Well, I love me van!" "Laptop, kitchen sink, it's all in here somewhere." "I try and keep it really tidy, everybody takes the mick cos it's such a tidy van." "He polishes that every day." "When he gets home, he gives himself another hour on the time sheet and gives his van a good polish." "Seven years in the army, that's what it is, you're either tidy or you're in a lot of trouble, like." "The huge 280-tonne crawler crane has been hauling heavy equipment around the site." "Steve leads the team tasked with lifting it from the cramped space so building work can begin." "The lifting of the crane out of the hole, it's not something you do every day." "I've been doing it 15 years now, I suppose it's never easy, like." "The crane is so huge, and the site so small..." "Put the rest of the barriers in." "..that first they need to close off a side street to lay its 60-metre-long boom arm down." "Keep moving her down, mate, keep moving her down." "Nice and steady." "And hold it there, stop." "Just watch yourself, cos that's going to slam that way." "Hold it there, Norbert." "Steve now needs to bring in a big mobile crane to dismantle the rest of the crawler." "The obvious place to position this is the empty narrow strip on site, from where it can easily lift out the crawler crane." "But the world's oldest underground railway, the Metropolitan Line, runs less than two metres below the surface." "Putting the crane here could damage the Victorian tunnels." "So the team has no option but to position their crane on Moorgate." "Closing off one of London's major traffic arteries." "Moorgate is an essential thoroughfare into the heart of the historic business district." "Over 400,000 people work in the City during the week but at the weekend it's relatively quiet." "We're going to be slinging you in through the head there." "Once they close Moorgate tonight, Steve's team have just a single weekend to get the crawler crane off site." "This part of London has always been busy." "When Victorian engineers built the Metropolitan Line in the 1860s, they closed streets for years." "Cutting huge trenches into the ground to form Tube tunnels caused major disruption." "Cor!" "Steve can't afford to cause gridlock here today." "He needs everything to run like clockwork." "Yeah, it was a lot easier when I was about five years younger and two stone lighter!" "In the heart of the West End, Crossrail's new station at Tottenham Court Road will be a gateway to the shops of Oxford Street." "As well as the vibrant area of Soho." "Soho is London's entertainment hub, home to hundreds of bars, restaurants and the West End's famous theatres." "Here we are in the middle of Soho Square." "Crossrail is building a new station directly underneath our feet here." "Our tunnel boring machine is directly under this building opposite us there." "Advancing on average 22 metres a day," "Crossrail's vast tunnel boring machine is closing in on the Eye of the Needle." "We've got to pass under a couple of buildings before it gets to the Eye of the Needle, but before we get there obviously we've got to protect the buildings." "We don't want to put the table-tennis table out of level." "It's all part of keeping London moving." "Digging directly under a city is a delicate operation." "The loose ground around freshly dug tunnels could settle unevenly, potentially causing buildings to tilt." "So Crossrail's engineers use a network of lasers and targets to spot any movement of buildings." "If you look closely at the buildings, you can see lines of these prisms that are all across the facades." "On the far corner there, on the brackets away from the building, you can see an automatic station up on the end there." "It'll know where these prisms are supposed to be, it'll turn the instrument to see where it last read the prism from, and then it'll take the shot that'll give it the exact location of the prism." "You'll see it rotating round now, working its way around, and then sending all that data back to the control room so we know where all these prisms are in real time." "Data from thousands of targets installed across Central London flows back to Tunnel Control." "Simon Leavy analyses any slight change in ground level picked up by the instruments." "If the ground moves either up or down, we can tell from these graphs." "The nodes on the points are blue so that means they're not in any trigger area but if they go to a green, it's a green alert, amber and red." "Robot trackers keep check on some of the most historic buildings in London, 24 hours a day." "Amongst them is one of the oldest structures in Soho Square." "The Grade I listed charity and chapel House of St Barnabas." "This is just so 1750s." "This building was the anchor building for the development of the square here in Soho." "If we look up, this is the plasterwork installed in 1754." "It's a classic piece of rococo work." "The main hall and the Silk Room next door together constitute the last complete set of rococo plasterwork in London." "And so the house is monitored in a variety of ways." "There's a theodolite looking at these two faces and there's another theodolite at the back." "I'm standing on top of monitoring devices, which are built into the floor, and there are monitoring devices above my head, again built into the floor." "This broad staircase was designed to look completely floating free." "Crossrail have built a steel framework, which is underneath the staircase." "It's not supporting the staircase, it's a safety net." "Were the staircase to fall apart, the steel frame would catch it and we would be able to rebuild it using the existing materials." "The House of St Barnabas is bristling with gadgets." "But, despite supporting its stairway and protecting its pillars, there's a problem." "As engineers dig passages beneath Soho Square to link up Tottenham Court Road's two new platforms..." "..the excavations are disturbing the ground." "In Soho Square now we have some amber triggers on the levelling points." "It's not to do with the TBM, it's the new ticket hall, so they're actually excavating fairly deep in that area." "Sensors on the House of St Barnabas have triggered alerts." "Reverend Scott fears cracks in his plasterwork are getting worse." "The corner behind me has been gently moving towards the square." "And we are watching the cracks that are forming in the plasterwork." "Now, we don't want to be panicky about this, but you have to keep an eye on what's going on." "The main thing is to try to ensure that it all stays up there." "The Reverend isn't the only Soho resident worried about the impact of Crossrail's construction work here." "The Star Cafe was started in 1933 by my father." "I personally have only been here 52 years, so, yeah, got a bit more to go yet." "Since work began, Mario's road has been closed to traffic and the cafe is now within touching distance of the building site." "Obviously it affects the amount of people that can get down to here." "So a big bulk of our clients has gone." "I say our trade is down, yeah, 35% without any hesitation." "Is Crossrail essential?" "Be wonderful... when it's done." "Two stops back east, at Liverpool Street... ..the fight for space on the cramped site has forced the team to close off a side street to break up a huge crane." "What we're going to do now, we're going to split the top two pins to the boom now and lay it down on the floor." "And we'll, er, knock it to bits." "HE SIGHS" "To be in my type of position?" "A good back and knees." "And good with an 'ammer normally helps as well!" "That's it..." "Yeah, it's knackered, I'll get me paint." "Obviously, when you take a crane to bits, you've got to examine it for any damage, any defects and that, so it's safe for the next job." "I'll mark it down, obviously someone will get a bill somewhere for it, cos they're not cheap." "I'll do me tag." "It's damaged but it's perfectly safe to work still." "Right, we'll go for the main rope now, Norbert." " Norbert's me crane driver." " Where's he?" "He's...in the crane." "And he loves his crane, like, so he's sat in there with his air conditioning and his newspaper and his dirty books, whatever else crane drivers read all day." "HE LAUGHS" "Right, we'll get these pins out." "These four here." "Are they the damaged places?" "Yeah, they're damaged, they'll have to be replaced." "It's the brightest colour we could get, bright pink." "Look at that, bobby-dazzler." "Innit?" "They call him King Rigger." "He's not bad to work with." "He likes the whip, getting yous to do things now and again." "Me Scouser's gone missing." "Hey, Steve!" "Oh, he's there, it's all right, we've found him." "He's not been arrested." "Right!" "Once we're happy and the lights go red, we'll close the north side off, both lanes." "With the boom arm down, Steve's ready to get a mobile crane into place on the road to lift out the rest of the crawler." "It's time to shut down Moorgate." "OK, mate, as soon as it's red and it's safe to do so, go for it." "That taxi's your last one, mate - as soon as that taxi's out." "Moorgate is now closed." "The team only has the weekend to break down and remove the crawler crane before the road must reopen for the Monday-morning rush hour." "But there's a hitch with the 350-tonne mobile crane they're calling in to lift out the crawler." "I don't know if you've heard about the crane." "I haven't." "Well, I've just had a heads-up." "The 350-tonne crane has got damaged on another site   it won't be coming here." " OK." "There are only two of those 350-tonne cranes in the UK at the moment." "One's committed on another job and couldn't be released and the other one's been damaged, so here we are trying to re-plan." "Back west, next to the new Tottenham Court Road station site... ..tunnelling work beneath Soho Square is causing the ground to settle." "The Grade I listed House of St Barnabas has a slight tilt, threatening its rare rococo decor." "Engineers must stop the earth from sinking before it gets any worse." "Before works began, they created a vast subterranean protection system." "They dug 22 unique shafts around central London to protect historic buildings." "Four of these shafts are in Soho Square." "A spider's web of thin tube stretches out from each shaft." "Each tube has holes every metre." "Engineers send a special device called a packer to the spot where the ground is settling." "The packer precision-injects grout to fill up any voids... ..lifting the earth back to its original position, protecting plasterwork, preventing further cracks and keeping buildings - like the House of St Barnabas - safe." "TAM number 46 then, yeah?" "This shaft in the southeast corner of Soho Square is the "office" for grouters Lloyd and Tony." "This is what we call a packer." "This rubber part here will inflate." "That'll form a seal to prevent any grout coming back out." "90 metres, a long way to push the packer, but you take the rough with the smooth, I think." " Two, six, one, five!" " OK!" "Two, six, one, five." "Lloyd and Tony spend up to 12 hours a day down this shaft, packing holes under Soho Square." "OK, that's depth, inflate the packer." "That's ready to start pumping!" "Yeah, pumping now." "I've been on the job for about 16 months." "Tony's been with us for about...six months?" "We generally tend to stick together as a team as well, you know." "Yeah, we do come... not too close obviously, you don't want to get too close in a place like this." "You get used to talking to yourself but apart from that it's all right." "Thirteen, three, zero, seven, five!" "OK, up on the reel." "Whoa!" "Now we're off to Crossrail in their new offices and we usually meet with them regularly to survey the monitoring, to discuss any particular operations that have taken place, and then we can co-ordinate." "Welcome to the House of Barnabas periodic meeting." "The team will meet once a month for the next four years to keep check on Soho's historic buildings." "I did report that everything was fine." "Then the summary sheet won't have any triggers, unless we get realignments." "THEY ALL LAUGH" "They'll keep a close eye on the House of St Barnabas, and its exquisite rococo plasterwork." "The charming lady here has survived to keep us entertained in the 21st century, and I hope for many more." "One stop west of Tottenham Court Road, in the heart of Mayfair, engineers are building Crossrail's new Bond Street station." "New Bond Street is one of the most expensive streets in Europe so it's definitely one of the poshest parts of London." "Any settlement that's generated in this area could potentially cause damage to buildings, so we spend a huge amount of time, money and effort making sure that doesn't happen." "We've established a network of grout shafts and by doing that we can physically lift whole buildings, the whole area if need be, and we can make sure there's no damage to any buildings." "Building grout shafts in the congested heart of London's swankiest district solves one problem, but means compromises must be made." "This shaft sits right next door to Bonhams - a fine art auctioneers established over 200 years ago." "Lot number 36, ladies and gentlemen." "A splendid Imperial vase." "Start the bidding here at £400,000." "400,000 is offered. 420." "As you can see, it's a very tight site here, there's very little room." "And you can see how close Bonhams' building is." "It's only a metre or so away from the edge of our grout shaft." "£700,000." "750." "800." "850." "Attending an auction is incredibly exciting." "I've been in the business for 30-odd years and, yeah, your adrenaline goes, it's an exciting spectacle, if you like." "It is like putting on a show." "One million pounds." "There's the bid." "£1,250,000, I'll take." "Quite sure, no more for you?" "I'm selling for £1,250,000." "All done?" "The priceless, the fragile, the unique - items for sale must be carefully exhibited in Bonhams gallery." "We've got a very special sale coming up where we're going to have about 34 select motorcars." "The sale content value is around about 13, 14 million pounds." "James needs to get 14 vintage cars through Bonhams' back alley and into the showroom for sale." "This is where Crossrail's grout shaft is and they've put these metal plates on top of the circle so that we can get our motorcars over the grout shaft." "We've not yet tested getting a car in here, so getting the first car over that plate will be one of those sort of moments that you have your heart in your mouth." "So this is the pinch point here, 230 centimetres, but realistically you've got about 210 centimetres, with a little bit of contingency either side." "The slightest scratch is going to affect them visually and affect their value as well." "On paper it works but we all know on paper is not necessarily what it's like in reality." "Across town, in London's financial heart, lift supervisor Steve is fuelling up for the day ahead." "You can't beat a good cup of coffee in the morning, can you?" "Bit expensive down here, though." "Well, up north I could get about four cups, a night out with me whippets, maybe buy a couple of pigeons and still have a tanner left." "Right, lads, come on then." "The crane originally booked for this lift has been damaged on another site." "They've hired in the biggest replacement they could find, but it might not be big enough." "The crane's turned up and he's only got 52 tonnes of ballast with him, which is adequate to do all but the last lift." "Without enough ballast to stabilise the mobile crane, the heavy load could cause it to topple." "Steve's team must source extra ballast for the biggest lift - fast." "Obviously what he's got on now isn't sufficient for the heavier lifts later on in the day, but it's good enough for what we've got to load out this morning." "Start taking her up, mate, we'll get it over the section." "All the way." "The team make headway, hauling the lighter parts of the crawler off site." "Right, mate, start taking her up." "Leaving the 44-tonne base section until last." "That's lovely that, mate, no bother." "You've just got to be careful of the buildings, people walking underneath." "The heaviest load we've got today is the car body of the crane, it's 44 tonnes all up, we need the full 96 tonnes of ballast on the crane to lift that." "They urgently need the extra ballast to arrive on site to finish the job and reopen Moorgate in time for the Monday-morning rush hour." "CAR HORNS" "Crossrail's road closures in the city are a bane for motorists, especially London's 23,000 cab drivers." "Cabbies'll moan about everything." "But you've got to have a good moan if you want to live in London." "Mike Zihni has been a cab driver for 12 years." "Crossrail's made all the roads rotten." "This area is where the gridlock is." "Haven't been able to go up and down these streets for four years." "You can't do the rat runs any more, so they've messed up what we call the dirty dozen - dozen streets that get you through the north part of Soho, to get out of it." "They're like little arteries into a heart." "One or two of them start shutting, boom, boom, boom." "CAR HORN" "I've seen cabbies, like, pulling their hair out, foaming at the mouth, crying almost on the dashboard." "DELUGE OF CAR HORNS" "You've just got to keep your cool and just go with the flow and not get too stressed out about it all, you'll just drive yourself mad." "If you want to work in it, you've got to put up with it." "Underneath Oxford Street, the tunnel boring machine is marching towards Tottenham Court Road." "It's a critical time for Tim Morrison, who heads London Underground's engineering team." "Constructing Crossrail is like undertaking open-heart surgery on a patient whilst that patient is awake because we're trying to maintain the operation of the railway as it is without disrupting it at all." "There are 31 locations where Crossrail are doing something that has the potential to affect London Underground." "It could be that they're digging a very large hole close to us, it could be that they are doing some demolition work, for example, near to our railway." "Each generation of engineers faces the same challenge upgrading London's transport networks to keep the city moving." "Back in the '60s, it was building the new Victoria Line that threatened to clog vital arteries." "NEWSREEL:" "Ten-and-a-half miles of route, twelve stations, eleven of them at intersections with one or more existing lines." "And the biggest engineering enterprise is at Oxford Circus." "Oxford Circus is just a stone's throw away from Tim's office." "We're standing on the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street." "Probably one of the busiest interchanges in the whole of London, I would think." "In 1963, engineers had to build a new ticket hall for Oxford Circus, directly underneath this busy junction." "It would take almost five years to construct." "So instead of closing the road they built a giant bridge across it, to keep traffic moving while they dug underneath." "NEWSREEL:" "The intention was to erect the bridge in one long weekend - the August Bank Holiday weekend, 1963." "The area took on a beleaguered look as D-Day came nearer." "Buses re-routed and traffic diverted, policemen deployed and essential services endangered." "And so zero hour arrived, 1.30 on the Saturday afternoon." "And it was raining - of course(!" ")" "Then the hardware started arriving." "The largest of the girders was 35 feet long and weighed just over five tonnes, but the iron fighters were tossing them around as though this was the Braemar Games!" "There's no bolting down, which saved time." "And bolts." "And they can't shift because the whole structure interlocks." "So it went on for the rest of Sunday." "And we were still waiting for the bit that didn't fit." "There was something like 245 individual steel elements that were slowly assembled and they got it right first time." "And right on the dot, 6.30am, Tuesday the 6th of August, 1963, with all services functioning, the first traffic crossed." "Keeping the buses moving, keeping cars moving, and that's allowed them to be progressively excavating the soil below the Circus itself." "If we don't learn lessons from the past, we won't be able to do the more challenging projects of the future." "So, 50 years ago almost to the day, we had this incredible feat of engineering, and 50 years later we're about to send a tunnelling machine through a very congested part of Tottenham Court Road station." "There are now just two days to go before Crossrail's tunnelling machine goes through the Eye of the Needle." "It's going to get a lot of attention from everybody and we want to get it right." "Do you know how expensive this photoshoot is?" "It's going to be a very close encounter." "The ruler's showing how close this 7.1-metre, 900-tonne tunnelling machine is going to LU operational infrastructure." "This is our TBM and this is the pile bottom." " Wow, that it tight, isn't it?" " It's unbelievable." "That's how good we are." "If we actually hit the Northern Line platform, then London Underground would have to close the station." "We've looked at where all the different structures are and we've convinced ourselves that there is an eye that we can go through." "There's just five centimetres' margin for error as Willie lines up his tunnel boring machine with the Eye of the Needle." "Yep, OK!" "His eyes and ears on-board is graduate shift engineer Ed Batty." "We're now in the TBM control cabin, and from this little room we can control all the systems on the machine." "It's also where we control the navigation from as well." "And the steering's here, basically." "These represent the rams, there's 22 rams, these numbers, so if you want to go down you put more pressure on the top." "Although the team can fine-tune the direction of their tunnel, as they pass through the Eye of the Needle they need to be sure they're lined up precisely with the tunnel's intended route." "We're coming up to the Northern Line and it's under a metre below us." "That line will still be operating, so there's going to be the day-to-day commuters whizzing underneath us while we tunnel over the top, unnoticed." "We'll even be able to hear the trains as we pass over, it's that close." "And we only get one chance to build this tunnel so we have to get it right." "The team must know exactly where they are at all times." "And, crucially, where they're headed." "To guide them, they've rigged a clever device behind the head of the machine." "It constantly fires a laser towards prisms - in front and behind - telling them if they're staying on track or veering off course." "They reposition this guiding light at each bend in the tunnel." "This laser precision is critical to steering the tunnelling machine through the Eye of the Needle." "So when we reach that position we need to be super good at what we're doing." "There's no room for error." "We've got a series of targets in the tunnel, they keep being built as we build the rings, so this machine fires a laser at that position, it knows where it is." "If you're on a straight bit of tunnel, the laser can go quite a distance without hitting anything." "If you imagine we're on a curve, we need to move this quite often." "There's a team of surveyors that come down here and their sole job is to make sure that bit of kit is in the right place and it's working accurately." "THEY SPEAK SPANISH" "The driver is just constantly keeping an eye, making sure he's in the centre of the target and taking the machine forward." "No steering wheel, but it's all done more like a computer game, if you like, where he's trying to keep the arrow in the centre of the target screen." "We'll be in tight control, so what's going on in here will be very precise and we have to be absolutely spot on." "Oh..." "Yep, OK." "They use the lasers to line the tunnelling machine up to pass over the Northern Line platforms and under the escalators." "This is the closest a machine of this size has ever got to an operational railway tunnel." "It's tight, it's going to be interesting, the next four or five shifts." "It's not far off, it's all getting very exciting now." "One stop west, over at Bond Street..." "We've got a layout of the plan of where the cars are going to get positioned." "..Crossrail's engineers have modified their grout shaft here, so Bonhams can get 14 vintage cars into their saleroom for a multi-million-pound auction." "It's the first time we've done something like this." "We'll bring them down in here into Haunch of Venison Yard, which as you know is the back entrance of Bonhams." "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" "It's pretty cool." "It's a prestigious car, it's amazing." "I would like to know how old it is and how it's in such good condition, it's amazing." "As you are!" "Come on, boys!" "This is ridiculously tight down here." "This is the bit where we get very, very close to Crossrail." "Anyway, we were going to use the cheapest car first off to see whether it worked, but anyway, we've got a £300,000 Clement as a test case." "It's a 1903 Clement Talbot that's 110 years old and it's the oldest motor car in the sale." "First one in, yes!" "So far, so good." "We've got a one-car sale at the moment." "As you can see, we've got a bit of a Rolls-Royce traffic jam behind us." "We've got a Rolls-Royce 20 horsepower, which is a car from the late 1920s." "It's good, keep it like that." "Straighten up, keep coming, keep coming, keep coming..." "Straight." "And the Rolls-Royce Phantom 1." "With a combined value of almost £1 million, the first three cars make it through the pinch point without a scratch." "Very, very heavy." "Two and a half tonnes." " You must have had your Weetabix this morning!" " Yeah, I did, yeah!" "It's quite nice, that - wouldn't mind it myself." "If I had a chauffeur, I suppose." "One, two three!" "It's very close." "The Bentley S1 Fastback was the one that was most pressing on us with the width where the Crossrail gantry is." "In their day, they were the fastest four-seater motor cars on the planet, so they were really quite an important motor car." "OK, you're in." "Jeez!" "Watch your back, here comes the Aston Martin DB6..." "Right, has it got brakes?" "The last few cars finally arrive." "It was a case of working with one another." "You've got to suffer some pain for the gain." "You can land at Heathrow and literally get to us at New Bond Street in an obscenely short amount of time." "If Crossrail didn't undertake this construction here, we wouldn't see the benefit." "After a quick polish, the vintage vehicles are ready to go under the hammer." "They sell for the grand sum of almost £17 million." "C'mon, Tubsy, let's get down there." "All right then, la." "Over at the Liverpool Street site," "Steve's keeping a close eye on two teams this afternoon." "We were winning 3-0 at half-time." "I've got a bit of a shrine to me team in the front of the van, the mighty Wolverhampton Wanderers." "That's me monkey - he goes everywhere with me." "Done some miles, he has." "He's a big Wolves supporter and I'm a big Liverpool supporter, and he's very, very bitter, over anyone else who's in the Premiership." "The ladies see this badge in your front window and they just flock to it and they can't help 'emselves." "It's like a magnet for women." "Yeah." "Don't tell me missus." "The extra 44 tonnes of ballast finally arrives." "Steve can now disconnect and lift out the two giant tracks..." "Everything's going tickety-boo." "Look at that, thing of beauty!" "He just needs one more thing to go his way." "You'd have known if they'd have lost, cos your phone would've been going like mad." " Everyone else would let you know." " Yeah." "I'm in a good mood now." "Wolves have won 4-0 today." "What more can you ask for, eh?" "4-0!" "Get in, my son!" "This is the right crane, isn't it?" "It's not the other one?" "It's final lift of the day, lads." "Obviously it's the machine now." "We're going to spin her in the hole so she's the right way round when she comes to going on the back of the wagon." "We'll get this up and on, like." " Let's do it, lads." " Let's do it, let's fall in love?" "Me arse ain't hanging out, is it?" "The delays mean Steve can't start the biggest lift until the very end of the day." "Right, you got the front end here just starting to come off the deck now." "We might have to just inch it up to get over this cherry picker, mate, all right?" "Just pinch her up mate, just so it's going over the top of that Harris fencing." "Hand you over to them lads, Nick, while I come up to the top..." "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Just hang fire there." "Yeah, spot on, mate, keep going down, keep going down." "Weight's off, weight's off, Steve." "Good man, sound job that, Nick, beautiful." "All me lads are safe, no damage to any equipment, you can't ask more than that, can you?" "And Wolves have won 4-0 today." "Win here for all this and a win for Wolves." "Cheers, lads, thank you very much." "High-five, Lee." "C'mon, let's get up to t'North." "With the site clear, work can now begin digging out the 40-metre-deep hole that will form Liverpool Street Station's new ticket hall." "In four years' time, it will be packed with up to 70,000 commuters each day." "Job done, the team can open Moorgate in time for the Monday-morning rush hour." "Right, Craig, I'm going to open my side now." "Right, your first cars are coming through." "At Tottenham Court Road, the 1,000-tonne tunnel-building monster is finally entering the Eye of the Needle." "Welcome, everyone, to Sunday morning, the 8th." "This is the day Steve and Willie's team has been working towards." "That's where we are at the moment, just touching the side of Charing Cross Road." " We're under the site of the old Astoria Theatre, aren't we, Willie?" " Yep." "Today, the tunnel boring machine will reach the narrowest point of its route across London." "So the crossing starts on back shift this afternoon" " and I think we're going to be there." " Yep." "Today is the critical day, it's the start of passing over the Northern Line and so this is the critical point." "The culmination of a lot of work over the last couple of months." "So people getting off the train in the next hour or so will not realise that above their head is a 900-tonne," "7.1-metre-diameter tunnelling machine." "It's vital the crossing goes unnoticed, or passengers on the Tube platform below could panic." "General comment just to say be aware of proximity of LU assets." "I mean, I would like Ed to keep an eye on the belt." "Yeah, just extra vigilance." "So over the next 20 rings we're directly above the Northern Line platform." "The Eye of the Needle." "We're just about to go through it." "PHONE RINGS" "Hello?" " Is that Ed?" " Hi, Steve, how you doing?" "We've got one more ring to go before the cutter head gets in line with the angle of the northbound line." "Tim Morrison of LU said he was down this morning." "He was there and he said he could hear the TBM and hear the miners." "We're that close, so he can actually hear what we're doing here?" "Yes, he could hear, but that was with no trains running." "Our one concern is that there are cracks within London clay, some of the water could ease out and find the simplest path of travel, which could be the big platform tunnel." "The TBM cutter head is now directly above the Northern Line northbound station platform, so about 850mm below my feet is the crown of their tunnel, so not a big distance at all." "You see where there's a blockwork wall here, just behind the tiled edge - that is pretty much the centre line where the tunnelling machine is actually crossing this structure." "Sam is one of the guys who's been based down on the platform." "He's specifically looking for any fluid ingress from the tunnelling machine because that's something that we are concerned is a possibility." "The tunnelling machine at the moment is quite literally above the tunnel crown." "There is that apprehension because there is a small risk that we could see some ingress, and so I guess that makes it more exciting." "With the tunnelling machine now inside the Eye of the Needle, the team must continue their vigil throughout the night." "As London sleeps... ..the 150-metre-long earth-eating giant continues its relentless drive." "Willie, got an update where we are?" "Yep, we're building 3024 just now." "The team - and machine - make it through the tight spot." "Yep, OK!" "No passengers panicked, no platforms evacuated." "We've passed over two platform tunnels with a 900-tonne tunnelling machine." "That's even a first, I think." " Yes, it is, yeah." " Cheers." "The lads have been working down here really hard and so have the guys up in the control room." "A big relief." "I'm chuffed that we've done it so well and we've had such good results." "We've done it, yeah, got through the tricky spot." "The trains have kept running, passengers haven't known that we've been there." "It's been a great achievement and I'm glad to be part of that team." "The team leaves a perfectly formed Tube tunnel in their wake." "There are still two huge jobs to complete." "Finish digging the 42 kilometres of tunnels..." "You can't be normal if you go underground, can you, earn your living in the bowels of the earth." "..and construct ten new stations, each the size of a cathedral, before the trains can run." "It's difficult to appreciate the scale of it." "The station is designed to deal with 32,000 people per hour." "It's absolutely huge."