United Kingdom, May 9 -- Balfour Beatty VINCI's giant HS2 tunnelling machine Mary Ann broke through today, marking the end of her mission to excavate the first bore of what will soon become the longest railway tunnel in the West Midlands. The 125-metre-long machine began constructing the 3.5-mile (5.8km) Bromford Tunnel, which starts at the Warwickshire village of Water Orton and extends to the northeast Birmingham suburb of Washwood Heath, in July 2023. The TBM was named Mary Ann, by the local community, in a nod to the Warwickshire-born writer better known by her pen name George Eliot. The tunnel breakthrough - HS2's first in Birmingham - is a significant milestone for the project, which will almost halve journey times between Britain's t...