Afcons’ Agra Metro TBM S115 Records Breakthrough at RBS College Station

Afcons Infrastructure – Sam India Consortium last night celebrated tunnel boring machine (TBM) S115’s first breakthrough at RBS College Station for Agra Metro Phase 1 project‘s 14.25 km Line-1 (Sikandra – Taj East Gate).

This was the very first breakthrough for the remaining portion of Agra Metro Line-1’s underground section, outside of the now operational Priority Corridor, between RBS Ramp and Mankameshwar Mandir Station. Overall, this was the 9th breakthrough for 7.93 km Package AGCC-02 connecting RBS Ramp – Taj Mahal Ramp.

S115 is a refurbished Terratec Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) machine and Afcons’ fourth TBM. It was commissioned in December 2023 to build a 2.2 km tunnel for the up-line from RBS College Ramp towards Agra College Interchange Station.

For its first drive which ended last night, S115 excavated and built a roughly 720 meter tunnel for the up-line from RBS Ramp to RBS College Station.

Uttar Pradesh Metro Rail Corporation (UPMRC) had awarded Afcons – Sam India Consortium with underground Package AGCC-02’s Rs. 1819.79 crore civil construction contract in March 2022 with a 48 month deadline.

Their section from chainage 3630.000 to 11564.485 consists of twin tunnels connecting 7 stations at Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, SN Medical College, Agra College, Raja Ki Mandi and RBS College.

TBM S115 has an interesting history. It’s one of Afcons’ three machines (S88, S89 or S90) which was used to build 6 tunnels on 82 km Delhi – Meerut RRTS project’s Package 8 within Meerut city.

The machine with an original cutterhead diameter of 7.51m was downsized and reconfigured to meet Agra Metro’s tunnel requirements. A new cutterhead was attached which I believe has a diameter of around 6.52 meters.

Earlier this week, Afcons celebrated erecting their 500th tunnel ring (1 ring = 1.4m wide).

S115 will now be dragged through RBS College’s station box and recommissioned towards Raja Ki Mandi Station, covering a distance of roughly 640 meters.

If my calculations are right then Afcons’ tunneling team will record a total of 10 breakthroughs between RBS College Ramp and Mankameshwar Mandir (Jama Masjid).

With this development, there are now 9 more breakthroughs left. The next one will be by S-718C (TBM Shivaji) which was commissioned in January to build the parallel down-line tunnel from RBS Ramp to RBS College Station.

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– TMRG