HS2 spends £20,000 on west London train station built with Lego
10 March 2025, 09:41
HS2 has spent a staggering £20,000 on a Lego model of one of its railway stations.
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The vastly over budget infrastructure project, designed to provide high-speed rail between London and the north, has come under fire after spending more than £20,000 on a Lego model of a train station.
The model of west London train station Old Oak Common, around the size of a kitchen table, took around 15,000 blocks to build at a cost of more than £1 per Lego piece.
It has been used at around 20 events over the last two years, the Sunday Telegraph reports.
Years of financial mismanagement will see HS2 cost taxpayers more than £80 billion by the time it is complete.
Rishi Sunak cancelled its northern leg in 2023 in a bid to save cash but Labour is reportedly planning to build a cheaper version in the coming years.
Bricks McGee, who built the model, described the project as “an outstanding success, everybody loved it”.
A spokesman for HS2 said: “Our Lego model of HS2’s Old Oak Common superhub is an informative way to engage local communities, businesses, rail users and the general public about construction of part of Britain’s new high-speed railway.”
HS2 will "prove its worth", the boss of the company building the high-speed railway has claimed.
Mark Wild, chief executive of HS2, said the project has "great value, intrinsic value".
He made the comments days after an influential group of MPs described HS2 as an example of "how not to run a major project".
The Commons Public Accounts Committee warned last week that the cost of building the railway between London and the West Midlands "might be close to £80 billion".
At an event on Tuesday to launch a study highlighting how the project has sparked economic growth in west London, Mr Wild said: "HS2 will prove its worth".
He also insisted his ongoing "reset" of the programme will "break the cycle of this continuous drip-feed of bad news".
