Tunnel boring machines (TBMs) Eileen and Peggy are powering ahead to construct the 23km Western Sydney Airport metro alignment in New South Wales.
Both TBMs are building the two 5.5km southern tunnels from Airport Business Park to the Aerotropolis with each reaching 1.8 and 1.5km into their journeys.
Launching earlier this year, the TBMs have since broken through at the Airport Terminal Station site before being relaunched to continue tunnelling.
So far, both TBMs Eileen and Peggy have excavated a combined 305,000 tonnes of material to build the twin railway tunnels and have installed 11,800 concrete segments to line the walls of the new tunnel.
Both TBMs are tunnelling at an average speed of 120m a week and are expected to arrive at the Aerotropolis Station site in mid-2024.
Two further TBMs have launched to tunnel towards St Marys and are about one kilometre into their 4.3km journeys at the northern end of the alignment.
It is expected that once operational, the end-to-end journey time between the St Marys metro station and Aerotropolis Station would be around 20 minutes.
For more information, visit the Sydney Metro website.
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