Tunnel boring machine Victoria sees daylight again after 500 days and 4 kilometres

07.06.2016

Plzeň-Doubravka, 7 June 2016 – A breakthrough into the portal right in front of the Plzeň district Doubravka ends the digging of the Ejpovice tunnel southern tube over four kilometres long. After working for almost a year and a half underground, the tunnel boring machine Victoria will see daylight partly at least. The festive event was attended by representatives of SŽDC (the Czech Railway Infrastructure administration), the State Fund for Transport Infrastructure, the supplying companies Metrostav and Subterra as well other construction participants and guests.

”The Ejpovice tunnel is a crucial piece of work on the line section Rokycany – Plzeň which is part of the trans-European backbone transport network and the Czech Rail Transit Corridor III, leading from Praha through Plzeň and Cheb up to the state border with Germany. In this section, the length of tracks will decrease by more than 6 kilometres“, said Mr. Pavel Surý, Director General of SŽDC. After the completion of the whole line modernisation between our capital city and Plzeň, travelling by train between those two cities should take less than an hour. Today it takes 1 hour and 35 minutes.

The tunnel boring machine Victoria is a younger sister of Anthony and Adele which dug the extension of the Prague Underground. It was produced by the Herrenknecht company in Schwanau (Germany), with a diameter of almost 10 metres, a length of 115 metres and a weight of 1,800 tonnes approximately. Its heaviest parts were transport into the Czech Republic by ecological transport on a ship. The used technology of tunnel boring machines (TBM) is one of the most modern tunnelling working methods, with speed and safety being its primal advantages. It is used worldwide for approximately 80% of tunnels being newly built.

”We are glad that some problems caused by unexpected geology under the hills Homolka and Chlum notwithstanding (we had to cope with abnormal water influx or hard spilites), we finally reached our goal. Now, Victoria is to be partially dismantled, remanufactured and returned to Kyšice. From there, digging of the second tunnel tube should start in autumn already“, said Mr. Ivan Hrdina, Metrostav Technical Director.

Victoria is a so-called convertible machine as it can dig both in a soil mode and in conditions of rock material after modification. Its highest reached daily digging output was 32 metres. The machine leaves behind a finished tunnel with a liming consisting of rings from a segment 7 + 1. The ring has a span of two metres with a width of 0.40 m. The rings were produced in Dýšin approximately 2 kilometres far from the building site and more than two thousand rings are necessary for one tube.

More info on the website: www.metrostav.cz and https://www.facebook.com/Metrostav 

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