Afcons Records Mumbai – Ahmedabad Bullet Train’s 1st NATM Tunnel Breakthrough

Afcons Infrastructure on Wednesday celebrated completing their first NATM tunnel breakthrough for the 508.17 km Mumbai – Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR Bullet Train) project.

This historic event for the project’s 20.377 km underground Package C-2 was recorded adjacent to the mouth of Sawli Shaft in Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai (view satellite imagery on Google Maps).

It marks the completion of a roughly 1.62 km tunnel for the main-line, built by New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM), between the Additionally Driven Intermediate Tunnel or ADIT (completed in 2024) and Ghansoli Shaft. Overall, Afcons has recorded progress of NATM mining 4.32 km within the package’s 5 km NATM-mined section.

India’s National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd. (NHSRCL) had awarded Afcons Infrastructure with Package C-2’s Rs. 6397.27 crore contract in June 2023 with a 1888 day (5.17 years) deadline.

Afcons has constructed 3 shafts at BKC Station, Vikhroli, and Sawli at approximate depths of 36m, 56m and 39m respectively to aid in tunneling activities which in the future will see 3 mega tunnel boring machines (TBMs) with a 13.56m diameter getting deployed.

A cool video shared by NHSRCL can be viewed here on X.

16 km of tunnels are planned to be constructed by three Herrenknecht mixshield tunnel boring machines (TBMs). The first TBM, S-1392, had passed factory acceptance tests at Herrenknect’s Chinese facility in the summer of 2024, but hasn’t made its way to India yet due to export restrictions put in place by the Government of China which I’ve explained in the past as it also affected Kanpur Metro Line-2’s tunneling plans.

India’s Railway Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, in May posted on X about Herrenknecht aiming to manufacture larger-size TBMs in India, but it remains to be seen if that materializes.

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– TMRG