‘Vindhya’ breaks through at Pottery Town Metro station
BENGALURU: After 184 days of drilling underground, Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) ‘Vindhya’ made a breakthrough at the upcoming Pottery Town Metro station at 10.30 am on Thursday. It has completed 900 metres of tunnelling from Cantonment station to Pottery Town station.
An official release said Vindhya commenced tunnelling work on February 15 this year. With the completion of its second leg, the TBM has now tunnelled a total of 1,755 metres. It was carrying out the operation parallel to TBM ‘Urja’, which emerged at the same station nearly two months ago.
Infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro has been contracted for the tunnelling work for the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL). A senior BMRCL official said that similar to Urja, Vindhya would be dragged from the South End to the North End of Pottery Town using power jacks with the Head Cutter pushed first and the gantries later.
“It would be dismantled here and its parts removed out of a vertical shaft erected near Shaadi Mahal. The process could take up to January 2023 to be completed. When that is done, Vindhya would have completed its job for us,” he said.
Vindhya had to carry out the challenging task of tunnelling under a railway line similar to Urja, the official said, adding, “No major hiccups were encountered during the operation.” Vindhya and eight other TBMs have been employed for boring work to build a 13.8-km underground corridor for the Nagawara-Kalena Agrahara Line of Phase-II.