TBM S1073 Makes Final Breakthrough for Mumbai Metro L-3’s UGC-04

Besides the Bombay High Court’s decision to grant interim stay on the Collector’s order to transfer land in Kanjurmarg for a pipe-dream mega-depot, there’s another reason to rejoice today!

Moments ago, Tunnel Boring Machine S-1073 (Krishna-1) operated by the Continental Engineering Corp – ITD Cementation – Tata Projects JV made a breakthrough at Dadar Station’s southern-end on Mumbai Metro’s 33.5 km Aqua Line (Line-3).

This was S-1074’s third (and final) breakthrough, Package UGC-04’s 8th ( and final!) breakthough for the 6.08 km Worli – Dharavi section, and overall Line-3’s 35th of 42 planned breakthroughs.

This Herrenknecht Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) machine passed factory acceptance testing (FAT) in June 2017, and in November became the first of 17 TBMs of Line-3 to be commissioned.

For its first assignment, it built the 2491m up-line tunnel Nayanagar Shaft to Dadar Station. After recording a double breakthrough along with its sister machine S-1074 in January 2019, it was recommissioned again from Nayanagar Shaft to build the 589m up-line tunnel towards Dharavi Station, where it arrived in November 2019.

For its final assignment that ended today – the machine was dismantled and recommissioned from Siddhivinayak Station in February 2020 to build the 1126m down-line tunnel with 798 tunnel rings.

Route of UGC-04 (Worli – Dharavi) – view Mumbai Metro info & map
soon…
boom!
cheers!

A video of the breakthrough with frenzied scenes of workers dancing can be viewed on my Twitter handle here.

With this development, tunneling works on 4 out of 7 underground civil packages have been wrapped up –

  • UGC-02: CST – Mumbai Central (4.049 km) – Final breakthrough recorded by TBM T59 (Vaitarna-2) in April 2020
  • UGC-04: Worli – Dharavi (6.08 km) – Final breakthrough recorded by TBM S1073 (Krishna-1) today!
  • UGC-05: Dharavi – CSIA T1 (4.94 km) – Final breakthrough recorded by TBM S64 (Godavari-4) in August 2020
  • UGC-07: CSIA T2 – Sariput Ramp (4.157 km) – Final breakthrough recorded by TBM D213 (Wainganga-2) in December 2019.

Here’s a table displaying UGC-04’s tunneling plan (best viewed on a desktop device) and the status of each tunnel –

TBMLineFromToDistanceStatus
1UpNayanagar
Shaft
Dadar2491mCompleted
Jan 31 2019
1UpNayanagar
Shaft
Dharavi589mCompleted
Nov 21 2019
1DownSiddhivinayakDadar1126mCompleted Today!
2DownNayanagar
Shaft
Dadar2472mCompleted
Jan 1 2019
2DownNayanagar
Shaft
Dharavi589mCompleted
Oct 11 2019
2UpSiddhivinayakDadar1106mCompleted
Oct 5 2020
3UpSiddhivinayakWorli1305mCompleted
Mar 15, 2019
3DownSiddhivinayakWorli1284mCompleted
March 16, 2020

With 35 breakthroughs completed, there are now 7 more breakthroughs pending on Mumbai Metro’s Line-3:

PackageSectionDistance, Status
UGC-01Hutatma Chowk – CST (up-line)551m, Not Started
UGC-01Hutatma Chowk – CST (down-line)556m, Not Started
UGC-03Science Museum – Mahalaxmi (up-line)1118m, In Progress
UGC-03Mahalaxmi – Mumbai Central (up-line)837m, Not Started
UGC-03Science Museum – Mahalaxmi (down-line)1136m, In Progress
UGC-03Mahalaxmi – Mumbai Central (down-line)830m, Not Started
UGC-06Sahar Road – CSIA T1 (up-line)1516m, In Progress

The final breakthrough on J Kumar – CRTG JV’s Package UGC-06 (Santa Cruz MVS – CSIA T2) is expected to take place towards the end of Q1 2021. When that happens, the line’s twin tunnels will be ready all the way from Science Museum in South Bombay to Sariput Nagar ramp at the mouth of Aarey Colony where the line’s depot was originally planned.

I’m expecting all tunneling works to be completed in Q4 2021 if no major hiccups arise.

For more updates, check out the Mumbai section of The Metro Rail Guy!

– TMRG

written by

Global traveler who prefers mass rapid transit

7 Responses to "TBM S1073 Makes Final Breakthrough for Mumbai Metro L-3’s UGC-04"

  1. Rupraj Sengupta says:

    Line 3 had 17,tbms working in total if i am not mistaken how many are active now?

    Reply
  2. Adarsh says:

    Congrats UGC-04 team 👏

    Reply
  3. DEVANG says:

    this aged well

    Reply

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