The first U-Beams have arrived! + New sections of the launching girder - 19th May 2026 HS2 Curzon St

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel. Today we can see the delivery of some Ubeam peers uh that have been pre-cast before they've been moved to the site and we're going to see where they where they're going to be installed in. I also have some insider information about when the next ones are going to be delivered. Um, and we can also see um that it looks like the tram track has actually been pulled up um on the the far side when we fly over there. So, we'll have to have a look at that as we fly over. And also, interestingly, it looks as though an extra piece of the launching girder has been delivered to the site along with a lot of concrete blocks.

[00:00:44]I also want to mention our discord again. Please do join if you're interested in this project. We have lots of very knowledgeable people on there and the amount of discussion is increasing on there. So, please do join um the community on there and it's it's a good place to reach me. If you have any questions or queries of somewhere you want me to film, it's the easiest place to reach me. I also want to say thank you very much for my uh channel members. Your support is appreciated way more than you know. Um and hopefully we can get a couple more of you and uh yeah, it's great to see the channel growing. Please do keep it up. Um, I'm going to keep providing the best content I can, learning more about the project.

[00:01:24]And yeah, let's get into the video.

[00:01:27]Right here we can see there is a concrete pump on the right hand side.

[00:01:32]Uh, the red concrete pump uh pouring on a new section of concrete around the base of those piles. I have also looked at a diagram of um a pile and a pile cap and a column. Some people were saying I was getting the the exact definition a bit wrong. So, we'll try my best to get it correct, but that's definitely pouring the concrete around the base of the piles.

[00:01:58]We can see that crawler crane with the weights now attached. They've flipped it round and it looks like uh that's moving towards the full work section which has been extended out past the third lozenge um column. And here in the middle of the screen, we can see what looks to be three Ubeam columns.

[00:02:27]Now, I will hopefully later on, if I get a better shot of it on the other side, I'll show you exactly where these are going. Uh when I edit the video, I'll try and show an arrow. Uh but these are basically going to hang across um from the two lines of concrete. um columns uh here that we can see these horizontal ones here. And they're going to link up um uh basically to to form a link between those two um horizontal columns.

[00:03:02]In fact, there's actually a picture on the Discord. Someone who knows a lot more about the project than me drew them.

[00:03:09]Um, those Ubeam peers are 50 tons 50 tons each. And when we get a better look at them later on in the video, I will have a couple more interesting facts about them.

[00:03:23]We can see the new piles have been unveiled on the right hand side. They've been dug out and the concrete has been laying uh laid down on the left hand side.

[00:03:43]Looks as though they're taking down the concrete um mold on the left hand side now.

[00:03:53]And the reinforcing rebar on the right hand side section of those four there is taking shape.

[00:04:01]It's advancing rapidly.

[00:04:04]And then the next thing is for them to put the concrete molds up and then the concrete will be poured over these.

[00:04:14]I do get a few comments every now and again where people say, "Oh, we can't see the difference video to video." I can see huge differences and so can most of you. Um I think people are expecting the whole stage be to be built in a week. Um but yeah, progress is moving very quickly now, especially now most of it's above ground. You can see them back filling um a lot of this area in.

[00:04:50]So these pile caps have been finished now and then they back fill the land in before adding a column on top. We can see the rebar at the top of them. Just about to start that.

[00:05:02]On the left hand side, we can see a lot of uh rebar being placed in.

[00:05:09]This is up towards the sort of western concourse.

[00:05:16]This is where this is actually going to be an entrance into the site. I have been told by people before that there's going to be a link directly into more street.

[00:05:26]um makes sense connecting sort of more regional routes together.

[00:05:35]We can see yet again they're power washing is what it looks like. Um those uncut pile those uncut piles on the right hand side. Um they've been doing that for a couple of days and someone mentioned that these blue containers here are to do with sort of water management uh around the site.

[00:06:07]I'm now going to fly over to the tram track.

[00:06:10]And those of you that watch regularly, um, we will notice quite a big change today in that the ones closest to us in a moment look as though they've been dug up.

[00:06:25]I don't know if there was an error when they put them down. Um, but they were all there yesterday and now they're all gone.

[00:06:34]So, let's have a little look at what's happened over here.

[00:06:45]Flying over the main line into into M Street.

[00:06:51]Chilton line and West Midlands Rail Railway serve more street.

[00:06:58]Chelton line goes down to London and the West Midlands Railway goes at sort of uh either Worcester or um down towards Stratford up in Haven. But here we can see um they may have uh poured some concrete underneath it and we can see uh what look like tram tracks. Um but yesterday there were sort of like rails uh going across them a bit like a like a train track.

[00:07:27]Um, I don't know if there's some kind of like mold that they used to pour a section in, but we can see it further up here. That's what I mean. It looked like that the whole way down. Obviously, that isn't what a tram looks like when it goes over it. It follows those thin lines in the road.

[00:07:46]Um, so yeah, interesting to see that progression down there.

[00:07:55]And then when they finish that there, it will follow along this path underneath that railway arch.

[00:08:05]I'm just going to get a bit of a better view here of where we're up to.

[00:08:15]So, we're up to just past that junction in the road there.

[00:08:26]And then this is the path that the trams will take into the Kursen Street site.

[00:08:37]We can see they've covered up a lot of the mains works they were doing up here.

[00:08:41]Meaning that hopefully when that's done, they can move straight onto this next section.

[00:08:53]As we move back over to Keren Street, we can see one of the main sections they're working on at the moment.

[00:09:02]Um, in terms of the piles and and turn them into pile caps. You can see very quick progress over here. I'm going to guess by sort of as a guess the end of June. Um most of these piles that we can see here um will have pile caps over them. Um so that's sort of six weeks and this whole area which is way bigger than it looks if you look if you compare it to the people uh will all have concrete on top of it. We can see the false works now being extended.

[00:09:35]I've been told these screw looking things that I've been calling them. They they're like um they have little squares on the top of them. Uh these are actually called adjustable props and these are used to basically set the height of the uh false work. This area is um going to be an area where it's got to manage high loads uh heavy weights. Um and we can see the U beams over here. Now these are 50 tons each uh each as I must have uh mentioned earlier and there's going to be two more of them delivered. Um, and they're offloading first thing on Saturday at 8:30 a.m.

[00:10:16]Uh, I don't think I'll get out there on Saturday for 8:30 a.m. to watch them unload them. Um, as I don't usually do videos on the weekend, but um, we can see. I might.

[00:10:28]We can see them sort of joining up on the top of there. There seems to be an extra four layers of uh, rebar going across those those first three um, columns.

[00:10:47]We can see uh that blue crane over there helping to lift a lot more of that reinforcing um sort of rebar uh onto the rest of this water attenuation tank. Obviously, if you followed my videos from a month ago, it looked way different. very complicated inside this box with a lot going on.

[00:11:09]They've just recently put decking over the top of it. And now when they've um put rebar across this in the correct um areas, they're going to cover all of it in concrete. And you'll never know that there's a box down there unless you watch my previous videos. You can see a lot of these concrete boxes. Um so these blocks with four holes in each well a hole in each corner. Um there's a lot more of those being delivered to site and we'll see a lot of them down by Lolly Middleway when we fly over here.

[00:11:42]Nothing much happening down here. Um this is where the car park's going to be underneath the vioaduct.

[00:11:51]Um be interesting to see how they turn that into a car park under a live railway, but I'm sure they got it figured out.

[00:12:03]No work started on these um vio supports on this side of the canal yet. We don't expect that to happen for just a while or for a while just yet even.

[00:12:16]And then as we look over to the left hand side here towards um what we think is a launching girder there is a delivery of those said concrete blocks that I was just referencing a moment ago. I will zoom in on this in just a second. However, uh I'll do it on the way home as I wanted to, uh make sure I got couple of shots of Bellingham Bridge in or C number two violuct. I always say them both cuz some people get wound up if you got a Bellingham Bridge.

[00:12:49]We can see the um the yellow sort of crane has been um taken down, at least for today, and the decking section looks a lot more complete. They've actually um that steel uh Varduk support on the left hand side was actually facing the wrong way yesterday. I forgot to point that out. Um but that has now been rotated round and it's good to see that they're all going the same way. Apparently that Vardock support with the purple around it that looks a bit flimsy that is just temporary um for the slide and then they will remove that later on and only the ones with concrete in the middle will remain.

[00:13:32]We can also see that at the end of Bellingham Bridge uh in a moment the ends are turned up. Uh I didn't know this yesterday but that apparently is due to when they slide it the bridge will sag slightly.

[00:13:46]And um it's basically helps it um slide back up and onto the next var support when it reaches there.

[00:13:57]Uh Lolly Middleway is uh has road closures every night um starting next week and that is apparently to um install the sort of bridge decking on it. Um what was it actually called?

[00:14:12]Yeah, the it's having the bridge decking installed and sort of the drainage in the lo around it um improved and also on the right hand side here we can see what seems to be a new delivery of um part of that launching girder and we can also see more of those concrete blocks being delivered.

[00:14:32]So I think although it's not explic explicitly listed um in the road closure report I think they are going to build that launching girder during this road closure that starts next week and it happens every night um until the 8th of June and uh the Bellingham Bridge slide is from the 29th of Mar until the 31st of Looking back across Kosa Street into the center of Birmingham, we can see just how busy it is. There's very little of the site left now um that isn't sort of doesn't have something on it is the best way to describe it. So, it's getting very busy now.

[00:15:20]I will when it comes to it do a one year of making videos and looking back at it.

[00:15:25]And I was looking today. Uh I started in July last year and the the change is is uh remarkable.

[00:15:34]Again, the distances look a lot smaller because I'm very high up on my drone here. I'm probably 40 35 m high. Um but on the ground, this is a a monumental site. It's huge. We can see them continuing to do the um concrete paws.

[00:15:54]Um, on this rebar sections, they're doing half at one half in one go of the semicircles.

[00:16:01]And we can see the rebar getting thicker and thicker on this section of the water attenuation tank along with a blue arch being placed there. You have to pause the video for that.

[00:16:14]Looking on the ground, there's lots more form work um with those adjustable props in.

[00:16:22]And we can see the main tower crane is currently working on um that concrete hopper that's just near that concrete mixer.

[00:16:32]And what they're doing there is they are filling in the walls of that water attenuation tank. There's concrete going the whole way around it.

[00:16:42]And another look at these U beams.

[00:16:47]We've got little rebar hooks the whole way along the side of them.

[00:16:52]and they're going to link up between these two concrete uh column rows and I'm going to link them up.

[00:17:08]Looking over now towards the offices that aren't open yet.

[00:17:25]Not too much change here today. Um we can see that cherry pick a crane, but no one's actually using it today. I can see they've dug up a section on the left hand side of um some of the tiling.

[00:17:39]I think they're actually trying to fix it before they continue on and build the rest of it. But these offices look pretty much finished now. They just need to finish up the outsides. And when they're finished, the capacity on site is going to increase dramatically. And there's going to be over a thousand people working every day.

[00:17:56]I'd say now, just as a guess, there's maybe, I don't know, 300 on the site. Um maybe maybe slightly more. Um, but obviously to get to a thousand that is a big ramp up.

[00:18:12]I'm also interested what's going to happen here on the right where we said they're working on these piles. Uh, this is towards the right hand side of the tram track that's going to pass through. So, this is going to form part of the main building.

[00:18:33]We can see them pouring concrete.

[00:18:35]out of this uh concrete pump.

[00:18:42]Once again, thank you very much for watching. Your support is greatly appreciated. Please do like and subscribe, follow the Discord, all that good stuff. And follow me tomorrow as uh the development of Kurs and Street continues.

[00:18:58]Uh thanks for watching. Bye.