Afcons Begins Lowering Bangalore Metro’s TBM S1264 at RMS

Workers from Afcons Infrastructure on Thursday night began lowering parts of tunnel boring machine S-1264 at a shaft adjacent to the Rashtriya Military School Station (near Vellara Junction) on Bangalore Metro’s 21.386 km Pink Line (Reach 6) which will connect Nagawara – Kalena Agrahara through 18 stations.

This earth pressure balance (EPB) machine is the first of 3 Herrenknecht machines which will be deployed by Afcons for constructing twin tunnels on the 3.655 km Package RT-03 (Rashtriya Military School Station – Dairy Circle Ramp) of the 73.92 km Bangalore Metro Phase 2 project.

The machine passed factory acceptance tests (FAT) in November 2020 at Herrenknecht’s Indian plant at Alinjiwakkam, Tamil Nadu (view images with Indian-flag themed cutterhead) and arrived in Bengaluru in early January.

Per the tunneling plan, it will build both twin tunnels between Rashtriya Military School Station and Langford Town Station – a one-way distance of 596 meters which Afcons hopes to accomplish in 235 days. From Langford Town Station, the machine will excavate back northwards.

A total of 9 TBMs will be deployed by Afcons (3), Larsen & Toubro (4) and ITD Cementation (2) for constructing the city’s Pink Line. Here’s a status with figures displayed from BMRCL’s December 2020 newsletter. The upcoming January newsletter should give a more current status of tunneling progress.

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– TMRG