Work begins on Sydney Metro tunnel from Chatswood to the Harbour
Staff Writer |
Sydney Metro’s third mega tunnel boring machine (TBM) has now started tunnelling, marking the next stage in delivering the new 31km metro twin tunnels below the centre of Sydney and deep under Sydney Harbour.
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TBM Wendy has started digging the 6.2 kilometres of tunnel from Chatswood to the edge of Sydney Harbour at Blues Point.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it is another major metro milestone.
Wendy is one of five TBMs that will excavate 5.9 million tonnes of rock – enough to fill about 940 Olympic swimming pools.
So far, TBMs Nancy and Mum Shirl have excavated 1.3 kilometres of tunnel and 114,000 tonnes of crushed rock from Marrickville on the 8.1 kilometre journey to Barangaroo.
The TBMs are about 150 metres long – or longer than two Airbus A380s – and specially designed for Sydney’s geology to cut through our hard sandstone.
Wendy and another TBM will tunnel towards the new Sydney Metro stations being constructed at Crows Nest and North Sydney before being retrieved at a temporary construction site at Blues Point.
A fifth machine has been specially designed to deliver the twin tunnels under Sydney Harbour.
The TBM has been named after Wendy Schreiber, a volunteer at Bear Cottage – the only children’s hospice in NSW and long standing charity partner for the Sydney Metro tunnelling contractor John Holland CPB Ghella.
On major tunnelling projects around the world, underground workers look to Saint Barbara for protection and, as such, machines that work underground are traditionally given female names.
Sydney Metro opens in the city’s north west in the second quarter of this year – with 13 metro stations, 4,000 commuter car parking spaces and 36km of new metro rail.
Metro rail is being extended into the Sydney CBD and beyond to Bankstown – in 2024, Sydney will have 31 metro stations and a 66km metro railway. ■
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