Aotea Station under construction for CRL. Photo / Greg Bowker
Aotea Station under construction for CRL. Photo / Greg Bowker
German manufacturer Herrenknecht did 500 tests to make sure it's ready and now the new tunnel boring machine for New Zealand's largest public transport infrastructure project is on its way from China.
The machine is at sea on the BBC Orion which is around Australia near Brisbane currently and expected here soon.
City Rail Link, the business running Auckland's new underground train project, has released a video showing the $13.5 million white and red steel borer named Dame Whina Cooper being assembled - and then disassembled to be put on a ship.
Crawler cranes and mobile cranes are shown lifting components into place, assembling the circular machine which will eat its way from Mt Eden to the CBD.
Blue umbrellas were erected for shade while workers put together the circular cutting head componentry, then parts of the vivid red cutting blade feature, shown going into place.
The machine has now been dismantled at the southern China Guangzhou factory and is on a ship in bits travelling here.
When it arrives perhaps in just a few day's time, CRL contractors will assemble it at the project's biggest site in the Mt Eden residential area where the tunnel portal has been dug over many months lately.
It will then be tested before beginning the underground journey to Albert St in about six months.
CRL staff are understood to be planning an unveiling before Christmas.
Then the TBM will be put to work around the clock without stopping.
After digging and lining the first railway tunnel, the machine will be then trucked back to Mt Eden for the second tunnel bore.
"Our TBM starts tunnelling in April 2021," CRL said, showing a departing image of the ship containing the machine heading for these shores.
City Rail Link's Karangahape Road Station construction with the Link Alliance's Dale Burtenshaw. Photo / Michael Craig
The TBM will not only excavate the tunnels but also remove tunnel spoil and install concrete segments to line those very tunnels.
It will excavate two 1.6km tunnels from Mt Eden to the CBD to link with the tunnels already dug from Britomart Station.
The diameter of the cutter head at the front of the machine is 7.15m, more than the height of an adult giraffe which is about 6m tall.
The machine weighs 910 tonnes. CRL says that is roughly the combined weight of nine blue whales, the largest animal known to have existed.
The total length of the machine is 130m, longer than a rugby field.
"Following mining tradition, the TBM has been named after an inspirational woman - the Māori rights champion Dame Whina Cooper. After successfully completing factory assessment tests, the TBM is now being shipped in sections to New Zealand," CRL said.
