Tunnelling on the north western section of Sydney’s new Metro rail line is almost finished with the final tunnel boring machine just 500 metres from its destination.
Tunneling began in September 2014 with a machine dubbed Elizabeth boring a 9 km tunnel from Bella Vista to Cherrybrook. Elizabeth recently finished her journey and is being dismantled and removed from the site.
Over the 15 months of her operation, she travelled an average weekly distance of 171 m, excavated more than 700,000 t of crushed rock, both sandstone and shale, and installed over 28,000 concrete segments to line the new rail tunnel.
Her sister machine, Florence, is creating a twin 9 km tunnel from Bella Vista and is now just a couple of weeks away from Cherrybrook. Two other tunnel boring machines, Isabelle and Maria, have already created twin 6 km tunnels from Cherrybrook to Epping from where the line will connect with the existing Macquarie line.
The final part of construction is a 4 km elevated railway from Bella Vista to Rouse Hill.
Sydney Metro Northwest will feature eight new stations with services due to start in the first half of 2019 between Rouse Hill and Chatswood. It will ultimately connect with a CBD metro line from Chatswood to Sydenham south of the city then on to the existing Bankstown line which will be upgraded to create a 66 km line from Rouse Hill to Bankstown.
The NSW Government says that, by using metro style services, it will have the potential to operate an additional 30 services an hour through the CBD, increasing the capacity of the Sydney rail network substantially.
The 105 t cutting head from tunnel boring machine Elizabeth is lifted to the surface. Photo: Transport for NSW.