L&T Records Mumbai – Ahmedabad Bullet Train’s 1st Mountain Tunnel Breakthrough

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) today recorded the first mountain tunnel breakthrough on 237.1 km Package C4 of the 508.17 km Mumbai – Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR Bullet Train) project.

This 350m long tunnel through a hillock near Zaroli Village in Gujarat’s Valsad District was built using the New Austrian Tunnel Method (NATM) by controlled blasting in 10 months. It’s the project’s only tunnel within Gujarat state.

With a diameter of 12.6m and height of 10.25m, this single-tube horse-shoe shaped tunnel will be capable of hosting 2 parallel rail tracks for running the line’s Shinkansen trains.

India’s National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) had awarded Larsen & Toubro with Package C4’s Rs 24,985 crore civil construction contract in November 2020.

Package C4 represents 46.66% of the line making it the longest amongst all 8 packages. It runs elevated from Zaroli Village on the Maharashtra – Gujarat border to Vadodara Station through 4 stations at Vapi, Bilimora, Surat and Bharuch in Gujarat.

Besides this 350m tunnel south of Vapi Station, L&T’s scope also includes construction of Surat Depot, 14 river crossings, 42 road crossings and 6 railway crossings.

Some photos via ANI:

Here’s a cool raw video by News Station on YouTube in which you can hear controlled blasts taking place (00:06) and a view of the viaduct (00:34) leading to the tunnel.

Mumbai – Ahmedabad HSR will have a total of seven mountain tunnels constructed using NATM. The other 6 will be located in Maharashtra on 135.45 km Package C3 (Zaroli – Shilphata), also awarded to Larsen & Toubro.

The tunnel I’m more interested in is the one coming up on 20.377 km underground Package C2 where Afcons Infrastructure will deploy at least 2 Herrenknecht mega tunnel boring machines (TBMs) with a diameter of 13.1 meters to bore an approximately 16 km long tunnel between BKC in Mumbai and Sawli Shaft in Ghansoli.

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– TMRG