Conveyor system

Engagement on the conveyor system

We held four events on 23 and 26 February and 1 and 3 March to discuss our plans to construct a conveyor system to remove material and spoil from the station site and tunnelling site. The information we shared can be found here .

What are we doing?

HS2 will be constructing a conveyor system to move material from the Old Oak Common station site as well as the Victoria Road Crossover Box site to the Willesden Euroterminal site as part of our plan to reduce HGV traffic on the local road network. It will be constructed by our partner contractors BBVS and SCS.

The conveyor system will be designed to take hundreds of tonnes of material an hour from the two sites. For example, the BBVS conveyor coming from the station site is designed to take an average of 600 to 800 tonnes of material an hour which could equate to around 320 to 425 lorry equivalents a day.

The SCS conveyor coming from the Victoria Road Crossover Over Box site and where the material from the tunnel boring machine will come out is designed to take a total of over 3 .9 million tonnes of material over its lifetime which is an equivalent of over 195,000 lorry loads!

We will start its construction in spring 2021 and aim to finish and operational at the end of 2021, until late spring/early summer of 2025, however some parts of the conveyor will not run for this full period and could be decommissioned sooner.

When will the conveyors operate?

The conveyors are designed to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week because the tunnel boring machines will operate to those timescales. However, there will be periods when the belts are not running, for example during periods of maintenance on the tunnel boring machines. The Old Oak Common station works will be during normal working hours, which this means that the BBVS section of conveyor from the station to Victoria Road site will be powered down overnight, where possible.

Route of the conveyor system

Below you will see where the conveyor system will come from the station site crossing Old Oak Common Lane to Victoria Road site, crossing Victoria Road and then on to Willesden Euroterminal site having crossed the Grand Union Canal.

Noise, dust and light from the conveyors

They will be built and operated to meet the HS2 Environmental Minimum requirements and the operational work will be aligned with a Section 61 with London Borough of Ealing, meaning the council has powers to regulate and control noise and vibration. The conveyor is being designed to be compliant with these requirements and align with our commitments to minimise disruption to our neighbours from the beginning.

Where there are areas of the conveyor that may have increased noise, there will be acoustic cladding in place, meaning there will be sections of the conveyor that will be shrouded more because of operational noise.

There will be a dust shroud completely over the conveyor to minimise dust. Dust sprays will operate, but we will have to be careful how much water we put on clay. The clay will be moist so this will assist with controlling dust levels.

We do not anticipate that lighting will shine towards residents properties, it will only light the conveyor system. We need to provide lighting on the conveyor because we will have a CCTV patrol system and security operating in the conveyor at all times.

If noise, dust or light become a concern to our neighbours, we'll take measures to address these. Any concerns should be raised with the Helpdesk.

What could the conveyor look like?

Below are some images of what the conveyor system could look like in places that are public: