CHENNAI (Metro Rail News): This week, Larsen & Toubro lowered the first of their eight tunnel boring machines, S-1327A, into a shaft in Chennai’s Greenways Road neighbourhood to construct Package TU02 of the 118.9 km Chennai Metro Phase 2 project.
 The earth pressure balance (EPB) machine is 100m long and 6.65m in diameter and was previously put through factory acceptance tests (FAT) at Herrenknecht’s facility in Chennai back in July. It will be used to construct 24 km of twin tunnels for the 45.813 km Line-3 between Kellys and Taramani Road Junction stations.
In May 2021, L&T was awarded an Rs. 2385 crore contract from Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL) for Package TU-02 with a 42-month deadline. The machines’ shields have been lowered for the initial drive, and the backup gantry will be lowered and attached later for the main drive. L&T’s tunnelling plan with 8 TBMs currently needs to be discovered. This TBM will excavate south towards Adyar Junction.
In addition to this machine, L&T will deploy a Herrenknecht TBM S-1326A, four new CRCHI machines, and two refurbished Robbins machines from Mumbai Metro Line-3’s Package UGC-01. Both Robbins machines are located at L&T’s Tunnelling Excellence Academy near Kanchipuram.
CMRL has rescheduled the submission deadline and opening of technical bids for Line-3 and Line-5’s underground station works (Packages UG-01 to UG-06) at least ten times, with the current opening dates ranging from January 31 to February 22.
