NEWS |
Sydney Metro West’s Hunter St station cavern excavation completed
Methuen Obayashi JV wins NH sewer tunnel job US - New Hampshire’s City of Manchester has awarded the contract for the Cemetery Brook Drain Tunnel project to Methuen Obayashi Joint Venture. The project aims to transform the city’s
drainage system, reduce combined sewer overflows, and improve the water quality of the Merrimack River, a critical natural resource which supplies drinking water for 600,000 residents. The 3.6km-long sewer will be bored by
TBM to create a 3.65m i.d. tunnel running 24m below the ground surface. Construction will begin on the banks of
the Merrimack River where the structures will include a temporary excavation support system, a tunnel launch trench and a headwall. Seven drop shafts and corresponding
structures will be built. The shafts will be excavated in in rock either by mechanised excavation or controlled blasting. The shafts will provide construction
Above: Excavation of cavern finished for Hunter St station on the Sydney Metro West project, Australia
AUSTRALIA - Roadheader excavation of Sydney Metro West’s Hunter Street station cavern was completed recently, marking a major milestone for the project. The metro station cavern
measures 180m-long, 28m-wide and 20m-high. Cavern construction work was
underway for 20 months in central Sydney, in parts very near another metro line and also below iconic landmarks. Meanwhile shaft excavation at
both Hunter Street East and West sites continues. To build the Hunter Street station
cavern, one roadheader and a team of 57 workers removed more than 240,000 tonnes of material. The scale and location of the
station cavern called for meticulous planning and extreme accuracy in measurements throughout the large-scale excavation. At times, work took place just 1.8m from the M1 Metro Line and directly below major landmarks, including the heritage-listed State Library of New South Wales and The Domain. Hunter Street station will be the
final stop on the 24km-long Sydney Metro West line that is planned to
8 | August 2025
double the rail capacity between Greater Parramatta and the Sydney central business district (CBD). Sydney Metro West is expected
to be completed and trains services commence in 2032. The busiest station on the line is expected to be Hunter Street, which will have two entrances. A joint venture of John Holland,
CPB Contractors and Ghella is delivering the station excavation and tunnelling between The Bays and Hunter Street, in the CBD. Other cavern excavations have
been underway in other parts of Sydney. Gamuda Australia and Laing O’Rourke are constructing the rail crossover cavern, station box cavern and stub tunnels at Westmead station, and the station box at Parramatta station. Additionally, the city’s metro
works include Acciona Ferrovial Joint Venture continuing site demobilisation work within and around the two construction sites at Five Dock; and, at North Strathfield station and Sydney Olympic Park station tunnelling and the construction of the station box is complete, with minor nozzle and tunnelling work ongoing.
access, and DS-7 shaft will be used to retrieve the TBM following the completion of tunnelling. During its operational life the shafts will
convey flows into the drainage tunnel. The US$360m project is being undertaken
by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the NH’s Department of Environmental Services. The full project is scheduled to be completed in 2028.
TBM sees early finish on lithium mine tunnel CHINA - TBM boring has been completed for a 7.3km-long lithium mine transport tunnel in Chijiaoshan, Hunan province. The China Railway Engineering
Equipment Group’s (CREG) 6.3m-diameter TBM, ‘Longyuan’, was used to bore the mine’s transport tunnel on an upward incline through complex geology in the Nanling Mountains. The manufacturer says it is the first TBM
purpose-built to work in a lithium mine. The TBM was equipped with a wear-
resistant cutterhead, steel arch erector, rock bolt drill, and systems for floor preparation, side cutting, shotcreting, and material transport – enabling continuous, fully mechanised operations. The tunnel has an average gradient
of 5.7%, and in September 2024 the best monthly advance of 1,186m was achieved. Tunnelling was scheduled to finish before this September but was completed early.
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