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The second and final section of the £5.8 billion Channel Tunnel Rail Link project— now renamed High Speed 1—opens for business this month (14 November 2007). The 109 km long, 300 km/h railway cuts the London-Paris trip to a competitive 2 h 15 mins. It also means Britain is now directly connected to Europe's growing high-speed rail network, which currently extends to 3750 km. This paper introduces the 11 other papers in this special issue of Civil Engineering on the procurement, design, construction and regeneration benefits of the challenging, 39 km, section 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building Britain's first main-line railway for over a century—and one carrying trains at an unprecedented 300 km/h—required a completely new set of design standards for railway systems. This paper describes the signalling, trackwork and diverse range of other mechanical and electrical systems which, together with the rolling stock, make the tunnels, earthworks and structures of the second section of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link—now renamed High Speed 1—into a transport system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 12 km north Thames stretch of section 2 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link—now known as High Speed 1—involved constructing a high-speed railway formation across marshlands next to the Thames, alongside operating railways and crossing major roads. This paper describes the design and construction of the 12 km section which links the Thames tunnel to the London tunnels. The work included the push-launch of a 1 km long viaduct at Thurrock, which threads its way under and over the M25 bridge and tunnel crossings of the Thames respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety has been at the heart of the design of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project—now know as High Speed 1—but perhaps nowhere more so than in the complex section 2 of the route, more than half of which is in tunnel. This paper describes how the design and layout of the 39 km second section was heavily influenced by safety considerations, particularly the design and spacing of the cross-passages between running tunnels, the tunnel ventilation systems and the emergency response procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of the £5.8 billion, nine-year Channel Tunnel Rail Link—now renamed High Speed 1—in terms of cost and programme is a testament to the sophisticated control mechanisms which were put in place by the client, project manager and the contractors. These project controls continued to be improved and refined during the second section of the project and have given senior management the tools to make timely decisions on key project issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]