Major milestone for Metro Tunnel after mega machines finish their digging
Work on the Metro Tunnel underneath the Melbourne’s CBD has reached a major milestone — and it spells good news for the completion date.
Victoria
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Massive machines have finished digging the Metro Tunnel after completing their journeys beneath the Yarra River, 1.5m under the City Loop and into the CBD.
Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan on Monday revealed the hard work was over for the four tunnel boring machines named after famous Victorian women; Millie, Alice, Joan and Meg.
A pair of twin 9km tunnels have been dug starting at Kensington all the way through to North Melbourne, Parkville, the CBD, Domain and South Yarra.
Much of the soil excavation work at five new railway stations has also been completed, with workers now ramping up construction of buildings, tracks and wiring the technology needed to run high-capacity trains.
The milestone means the project is well on track to be finished by 2025, and possibly 2024, with the tunnel boring machines to be torn apart and saved for future projects.
Ms Allan said the tunnels had on average dug 90m a week through difficult conditions.
“I don’t want to jinx future stages because we are working on a really big and complex project here but we have been really pleased,” she said.
“People were catching the train through the City Loop not knowing that just 1.5m below the ground the tunnel boring machines were doing their work.
“It's a big milestone but there’s more work to be done.”
Tunnelling started and finished the space of about 20 months.
Ms Allan said about 55,000 concrete segments built in Deer Park had linked the twin tunnels.
“I really do want to acknowledge the skills and expertise of the workforce who worked so incredibly hard to achieve these big and important milestones,” she said.
When completed, the Metro Tunnel will run the government’s High Capacity Metro Trains, which are 100m long, coming from the Sunbury, Cranbourne and Pakenham lines.
It will be separate from the City Loop, allowing for “turn up and go” trains and more timetabled services on other parts of the network.
Trains on Melbourne’s Airport Rail will also run through the tunnel.
Rail Projects Victoria chief executive Evan Tattersall said tunnellers had worked through some of the toughest soil conditions in the world.
This included difficult sections around Kensington and North Melbourne and the ground beneath the Yarra River.
“It really does get down to specifying the right type of tunnel boring machine that enabled such a smooth operation,” he said.
“You come really close to sensitive infrastructure like the hospitals in Parkville, historic buildings in the CBD, the City Loop, CityLink and everything’s gone pretty much exactly as we planned.
“In the stations we’re getting towards the back end structural stage and now starting to install services as well like power and mechanical equipment.”
Mr Tattersall said building railway systems and signalling would be a massive volume of work, with thousands of tests to ensure trains and technology talk to each other.”
Ron Kirner, the husband of former Premier Joan Kirner, toured the site to inspect the work dug by a tunnel boring machine named after his wife.
He said Ms Kirner would have been nervous about the enclosed spaces but would have loved to see the project.
‘It’s the first time I’ve been down here,” he said.
“You feel very honoured.”
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