Does anyone know/recall if Stansted Airport Tunnel was constructed by cut and cover or by boring? I've been able to discover that it was built in 1990 (or 1991 sources vary) but not which method was used. I'm interested to know because of the proposal for another tunnel for a second track, which would have to be bored because the runway now goes over the top.
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Stansted Airport Tunnel
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HMS Ark Royal
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A tunnel boring machine with a rotary backhoe, previously used on the Singapore metro, was employed on the contract. A purpose-built cradle and a 100 ton crane was used to handle the shield parts.
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The tunnel was built in 1990 - the line opened in 1991.
Western Lord
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The runway at Stansted was built by the USAF in the early fifties by extending one of the WWII runways for use by B-47s and B-52s and is the same length now as then.
Ambient Sheep
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Indeed. I remember that even in the late 1980s you could drive across it on a country road, albeit protected by level-crossing-style lights. 
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It's why all those statistics about how many runways Britain has built in the last 30 years are nonsense. So many were build in WW2 and the Cold War.
Yup...There are also plenty of examples of old runways being abandoned or reused as taxiways as airports have expanded too.
For example, this lot along Heathrow's current Northern runway.
Evidence of the former WWII airfield at Stansted.
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