TBM S81 Begins Tunneling for Pune Metro at Swargate

Engineers from Gulermak – Tata Projects Ltd. JV on Tuesday commissioned tunnel boring machine S81, the third and final machine of Pune Metro’s Phase 1 project at Swargate Station on the 16.589 km Purple Line.

This Ø6.61m Terratec earth pressure balance (EPB) machine passed factory acceptance tests (FAT) in January 2020 and arrived in town in February 2020 for building the 2.74 km Package UGC-02’s tunnels.

Its parts (cutterhead, shields, tail) were stored at Swargate Station’s north-west corner for an entire year waiting for the launch shaft, adjacent station area, and NATM scissor crossover cavern to get ready. Lowering of its parts for assembly works inside the cavern began in mid-January 2021 and local site acceptance tests were completed on February 28.

The machine will first travel from Swargate Station to Mandai Station, a distance of roughly 1297m to build the up-line tunnel. From there, it will tunnel onward to Budhwar Peth, a distance of roughly 860 meters in the old, congested city-centre.

Meanwhile, S81’s sister TBMs S78 and S79 on Package UGC-01 up north are still parked at Civil Court Station and undergoing minor refurbishment while the launch area gets prepared. Some really cool images of them being extracted out of the tunnels they built and into the crossover cavern can be viewed here and here (latest).

As shared earlier, either S78 or S79 might in the involved in building Package UGC-02’s tunnels from the north side, between Budhwar Peth – Mandai – Swargate, but that remains to be seen.

For more updates, check out my Home Page!

– TMRG