不一樣的生活 我在倫敦地下做"鼴鼠"

I've never been given a company car but I do drive something very special at work. I'm in charge of a “mole”, one of the giant tunnel-digging machines that are burrowing under London for the Crossrail project, linking the east and west of the city. Each mole is as long as 14 London buses and weighs 1,000 tons, yet is incredibly precise. It has to be to cut a path between the capital's subterranean maze of sewers, Tube lines and underground rivers.

我從沒有得到過公司用車，但我確實在工作時開着一種非常特別的車。我掌管着一臺“鼴鼠”，這是一種大型隧道掘進機，這些機械正在地下爲連通倫敦東部和西部的橫貫鐵路(Crossrail)項目作業。每部機械有14輛倫敦公交車那麼長，重達1000噸，卻令人難以置信的精準。它必須在倫敦地下迷宮般錯綜複雜的下水道、地鐵隧道和地下河道之間開闢出一條道路。

I'm 44 and have worked in tunnel digging since I was 16. My uncle ran a boring company and he gave me my first job, on a sewer project under Sheffield. In those days tunnelling was hard labour with shovels and picks. Now I sit at a control panel and it isn't physically demanding at all. I'd rather pick up a rattlesnake than go back to the old way of working.

我今年44歲，16歲時就開始做這種挖掘隧道的工作了。我的叔叔經營着一家鑽探公司，他給了我第一份工作，是謝菲爾德的一個下水道項目。在那個年代，隧道挖掘是一份艱苦的工作，要用鐵鍬和鎬。如今，我是坐在一個控制面板前，根本不需要體力勞動了。我寧願拾起一條響尾蛇，也不願回到過去的工作方式。

There have always been plenty of opportunities in my line but because it's underground, people don't always realise. I've helped dig miles of tunnels over the years, including the Channel Tunnel rail link and a tunnel that carries the electrical power supplies underneath the Olympic Village in London.

在我這個行當裏，總是有很多機會，但由於是在地下，人們不會總注意到。多年來，我幫助挖掘了數英里長的隧道，包括英法海底鐵路隧道(Channel Tunnel rail link)以及倫敦奧運村(Olympic Village)地下的輸電線路隧道。

For the Crossrail project I drive one of the latest tunnel-boring machines (TBMs). The one that I run is nicknamed Jessica and the power that drives it forward is equivalent to the force needed to lift more than 2,900 London taxis. Despite that, you barely feel anything when it is running. You do hear a hum from the cutter head, which revolves just two or three times per minute - but we are crawling forward at 100m a week.

在Crossrail項目中，我駕駛的是最新隧道掘進機之一。我開的那輛機車有個綽號叫傑西卡(Jessica)，駕駛它前進的動力相當於舉升2900多輛倫敦出租車所需的力量。儘管如此，在機器作業時，你幾乎沒有任何感覺。你確實會聽到掘進機刀頭髮出的嗡嗡聲，每分鐘僅旋轉兩三次——我們以每週100米的速度緩慢推進。

I work 12-hour shifts, sitting in a control room about 10m back from the cutting head. As the machine goes forward, earth is pushed behind and carried back down the tunnel. Nearly all the soil from the 26 miles of tunnels will be reused, including 4.4 million tons of clay being shipped out to a new RSPB reserve in the Thames Estuary.

我每12小時換一次班，我會坐在一個距離挖掘機刀頭大約10米遠的控制室裏，隨着掘進機的前行，挖出的土方被推到後面，然後沿着隧道運出去。總長26英里的隧道所挖出的幾乎所有土方都會得到再利用，包括440萬噸泥土被運送到皇家鳥類保護協會(RSPB)位於泰晤士河口(Thames Estuary)的新保護區。

Jessica also carries the pre-cast concrete segments of tunnel wall. These are pushed into place by a hydraulic ram, then cemented in with instant grout that takes a few minutes to set. The machines are so advanced that we even have our own kitchen area on board. If we had had these TBMs to build the Channel Tunnel in the 1980s, it would have cost a fraction of the price.

傑西卡還帶着預製的隧道混凝土管片。這些管片被一個液壓錘推至正確位置，接着抹上幾分鐘就會凝結的快凝灌漿。這些機械非常先進，甚至有我們自己的廚房區。如果我們在上世紀80年代建設英法海底隧道時有這些隧道掘進機的話，那麼成本會大大降低。

My work gets me into some pretty unusual places. Last year I was digging 14m beneath the Blackwall Tunnel, knowing that people were driving their cars just above me. Now I'm on a two-mile stretch between Stepney Green and Pudding Mill Lane. We should finish this section by the end of 2014 - the first Crossrail trains are due to start running in 2019.

我的工作把我帶到一些非常不同尋常的地方。去年，我在黑牆隧道(Blackwall Tunnel)下方14米處挖掘隧道，知道人們正在我的頭頂上方駕駛着汽車。如今，我在連接Stepney Green和Pudding Mill Lane的兩英里隧道段進行掘進作業。我們應會在2014年底完成這個隧道段。Crossrail的列車將在2019年開始通車。

I spend most of my day looking at a bank of screens, getting all the information I need on progress and direction. It's a far cry from when I started tunnelling 27 years ago. Then we used line of sight and a length of string for guidance. Jessica is laser-guided and I navigate via a GPS system. Despite her size, I can adjust the direction by millimetres with the push of a button.

我每天大多數時間都在注視着一排屏幕，獲得我需要的有關進度和方向的全部信息。現在的情況與27年前我開始挖掘隧道時大不一樣了。那時，我們用視線和線段作爲指引。“傑西卡”依靠激光定向，我通過全球衛星定位(GPS)系統導航。儘管體型龐大，但我可以通過按鍵將方向精確到毫米。

You make friends on a project like this, so camaraderie within the team is only natural. We'll have had three years together by the time the work is done, then I'm off to the next job - hopefully the new underground rail system in Doha for the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

你會在這類項目中結交朋友，團隊內部的同志情誼是自然而然產生的。在任務完成前，我們將一起度過3年時間，接着我會被派往下一個項目：希望我會被派到多哈爲承辦2022年卡塔爾世界盃(World Cup)而新規劃的地鐵項目。

I'm usually so tired at the end of my shift that all I want to do is call my family in Manchester and go to bed. We have an internal phone system underground but, obviously, there's no mobile phone reception. However, one of the good things about working underground is that you never have to worry about the weather.

交班時，我通常都很累了，以至於我唯一想做的就是打電話給我在曼徹斯特的家人，然後睡覺。我們在地下有內部電話系統，但顯然，那裏沒有手機信號。然而，在地下工作的一個優點是你永遠不需要擔心天氣。

There is always a danger of hitting something but I've never had an accident. The planning has been meticulous - there's very little margin for error under London. The tunnel will eventually pass 1.5m above the Tube's Northern Line. In my job, it doesn't get much closer than that.

在地下工作總會出現撞到什麼東西的危險，但我從沒發生過事故。規劃一直非常細緻，在倫敦地下，誤差容許量很小。這條隧道最終將在倫敦地鐵北線(Northern Line)隧道上方1.5米處通過，在我的職業生涯裏，這差不多是最小的間隔了。