Surat Metro’s TBM Tapi Records Final Breakthrough at Surat Railway Station

Gulermak – Sam India Builtwell JV The final breakthrough of TBM S94 was celebrated at Surat Railway Station on the 22.77 km Line-1 (Sarthana-Dream City) of the Surat Metro Phase 1 project on Wednesday.

This interesting milestone is the sixth and final breakthrough of the 3.46 km CS2/UG1 package connecting Kapodra-Surat Railway Station.

TBM S94 is a Terratech Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) machine, which constructed three tunnels for the up-line at Kapodra in December 2022. Following is a brief description of all three tunnels:

• Kapodra to Labheshwar Chowk (1.45 km – hidden breakthrough in January 2024)
• Labheshwar Chowk to Central Warehouse (655m – first visible breakthrough in March 2024)
• Central Warehouse to Surat Railway Station (389m – second visible breakthrough in September 2024)

This is not the first time this has happened in India, but my general map under the banner of Gulermak-Sam JV, which I use for system contracts, includes this event:

In March 2021, Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation (GMRC) awarded Gulermak-Sam India JV a contract to build the 3.46 km package CS2/UG1.

Six tunnels (three twin tunnels) have been constructed by S78 (Narmada) and S94 (Tapi) and three stations at Kapodara, Labheshwar Chowk and Central Warehouse have been constructed in their area.

In the photos above and below the back-up gantry of TBM S78 (Narmada) can be seen being pulled out for the parallel down-line tunnel.

This changeover marks the end of the work of S94! 2484 m of tunnels and 208 m of tunnel through Labheshwar Chowk station, which will be demolished. In August 2024, its sister machine S78 (TBM Smooth) had completed the construction of all three parallel tunnels for the up-line.

J Kumar Infraprojects has two machines: TBM S25B (Amir) and S28B (Dia). These are building the tunnels from Surat Railway Station to Chowk Bazar from April 2023. I will add updates on their status here as they become available.

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