NEW DELHI (Metro rail News): Afcons Infrastructure, on 15th December, celebrated the first tunnel breakthrough of tunnel boring machine S88 at Meerut Central RRTS Station for the 82.15 km Delhi-Meerut RRTS project.
The Sudarshan 8.1 Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) machine, manufactured by Terratec, was installed at the Bhaisali RRTS Station in March 2022. It then travelled 1823.39 metres which is the longest tunnelling drive of Package 8, in the direction of Meerut Central Station. On the route, it made a pit stop at a mid-shaft 695.85 metres south of Bhaisali Station.
Afcons received the Rs. 1529.10 crore contract for Package 8 with a 1310-day (3.6 years) deadline in November 2020. Their scope involves constructing three underground stations using the cut-and-cover method at Meerut Central, Bhaisali, and Begumpul, along with six twin tunnels from Brahampuri DN Ramp to Begumpul UP Ramp.
This was the second milestone for Afcons Infrastructure and the first for S88. TBM S90 (Sudharshan 8.3) made its first breakthrough for Package 8 at Begumpul Station in the middle of October after tunnelling around 750 metres from Begumpul UP Ramp located at Gandhi Park.
With this advancement, Afcons has four more pending breakthroughs. First, TBM S88 will be dismantled, transported back to Bhaisali, and launched to construct a 1 km tunnel toward Begumpul.
This was the third significant development for the RRTS project overall. Early in October, 5.6 km Package 4 contractor Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co. Ltd. (STEC) secretly announced the first breakthrough for the whole project at mid-shaft south of Anand Vihar RRTS Station.
