S-710 – 3rd TBM Arrives for Ahmedabad Metro’s Underground Section
Parts of TBM S-710, a Ø6.63m Herrenknecht tunnel boring machine arrived in Ahmedabad on November 30 after a 1840 km road journey from Chennai through the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
This 570 tonne earth pressure balance machine (EPBM) previously saw action in Chennai where Afcons Infrastructure used it to build three up-line tunnels over a distance of 4 km between Washermenpet and Central stations, with a final breakthrough taking place in February 2017.
In Ahmedabad, Afcons will deploy S-710, along with another new machine, for building 1.65 km twin tunnels as part of a Rs. 784.80 crore contract for the 2.446 km underground Package-1 (East Ramp – Kalupur) which got awarded by Metro-Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) in January 2017.
As per the tunneling plan, both machines are schdeduled to be commissioned from the East Ramp Shaft at Apparel Park in February 2018 towards Kankaria East and onward to Kalupur Railway Station for a total of two tunneling drives.
6.83 km underground section of Ahmedabad Metro’s Phase 1 – view Ahmedabad Metro map & info
Some images of the TBM’s parts at Apparel Park –
TBM’s cutterhead and mid-shield
Trailing gear/gantry
Screw conveyor
Construction for the launch shaft’s diaphragm wall at the East Ramp started in July (see pics) and excavation work has just commenced –
With this development only one more TBM (new) has to arrive in Ahmedabad.
The first two TBMs for Larsen & Toubro’s 4.378 km Package-1 (Kalupur – Ghee Kanta – Shahpur – West Ramp) are currently being assembled in Ahmedabad for factory acceptance tests later this month. Those two machines were originally manufactured by Hubei Tiandi Heavy Industries (THI) and previously saw action in Delhi to build tunnels on the 6.3 km package CC-27 (Hauz Khas – Shankar Vihar) of Phase 3’s new Magenta Line. They’ve now been refurbished & rebranded as Terratec machines with new serial numbers of S-71 and S-72, and are planned to be commissioned in March from Kalupur Station where diaphragm wall construction work is underway.
For more updates, check out the Ahmedabad section of The Metro Rail Guy!
– TMRG
Hi TMRG,
In the Ahmedabad metro page, I see that the first phase of ~39 KM is expected to be completed by 2023. Are there any major contracts still pending? If not it seems 7 years seems to be very long duration. Isn’t it?
MEGA completed awarding all civil contracts in January this year, but there are major land acquisition issues pending along the entire network at the Old High Court (where the interchange is planned), Vishwakarma Society, Thaltej Gaam and along the APMC-Gyaspur stretch. Each and every contractor (from IL&FS to Simplex to Tata) has a portion which is affected.
If you look at the location of the depots, operations on Line-1 cannot start west of the Sabamati without the tunnels getting ready through the old city. Similarly, operations between Motera – Ranip (one of the 1st contracts of Line-2 to be awarded) cannot start without the Shreyas – Ranip section getting completed by Simplex.
Sections of the project will start opening up from 2020, but the final piece is expected to open only in 2023. If land issues persist, then I’ll have to revise that.
Thanks for the very informative reply.
Long Time. No See. No Post. Hope you are alright. Also Hope you have not abandoned TMRG.com !
For Afcons Infrastructure’s underground Package-1 (East Ramp – Kalupur), Afcons will also bring a batch of pre-used Schöma CFL180DCL tunnel locomotives to Ahmedabad from those previous Chennai projects. About four or five locos out of the dozen or so Chennai group.
-PGG-
It is fascinating to see India suddenly enamoured with Metro technology.
It is fascinating to see India suddenly enamoured with Metro technology. What is new now?
What are the updates of Ahmedabad Metro???