Like a Greek temple, the pillars at Old Oak Common Station rise with extraordinary strength towards the skies.

The sheer scale of the structures in the vast concrete cavern is overwhelming.

Gleaming stone platforms for the HS2 high speed line stretch far into the distance in the 850-metre station box, so long it can fit the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, on its side.

Above them at the station in west London lie eight platforms for the Elizabeth line, Great Western Railway and Heathrow Express services.

It is a feat of engineering to rival the greatest rail stations constructed in Britain.

“This is the largest station built in London for must be at least 100 years,” Rail Minister Lord Hendy tells The Standard.

“Look at the architecture, look at the size of it.

“It's going to be absolutely wonderful.”

He was speaking after HS2 tunnelling, running under west London like the city’s veins, broke through into the Old Oak Common Station box.

The weight of some 14,000 double-decker buses has been excavated to connect the 14-platform rail super hub, which will be used by up to 250,000 passengers a day, to the high speed line.

Unlike HS2’s other excavated tunnels, which have predominantly been built using gigantic tunnel boring machines, the two 360-metre long sections were mined through London clay using tunnel excavators and lined with 30,000m3 of sprayed concrete.

The digging goes on, with tunnellers burrowing away as they head metre-by-metre towards the London terminal station of Euston.

The huge tunnel boring machines, launched from the eastern end of the Old Oak Common Station box at the start of the year, are continuing their 4.5-mile journeys towards the heart of London.

The huge project is expected to be complete by mid-2027.

But it will still be many years before trains travel up to speeds of 200 miles per hour, whizzing through the tunnels from Euston to Old Oak Common and then onwards to Birmingham, a journey which will be shortened to just 45 minutes.

This area of London was for many years known at least partly for its famous Wormwood Scrubs Prison.

Now it is a step closer to a homes and economic boom in west London, just as cross-Channel trains stopping at Stratford International Station are set to significantly boost the east of the capital.

The HS2 project, though, has been dogged by delays and costs soaring, possibly to as high as £102 billion.

High speed trains will not start running until between 2036 and 2039 from Old Oak Common to Birmingham, with the leg to Manchester having been controversially cancelled.

The full service from Euston to Birmingham and a connection to the West Coast Main Line is not expected to run until between 2040 and 2043.

“Of course, like the Elizabeth line, the day it opens, everybody will have forgotten how long it took and how much it cost,” says Lord Hendy, a former London Transport Commissioner.

“But they'll be concentrating on the benefits, and I think we'll see here a huge benefit to the economy of London, driven by this railway, and of course the economy of Birmingham and further north as the trains get further north.”