The first cuts have been made underground to build the Karangahape Station on the City Rail Link. At 32 m below street level the Karangahape Station will be New Zealand’s deepest underground station. It sits roughly halfway between the Mt Eden and Aotea Stations, with a twin platform 217 m long to accommodate nine-car trains, running from Mercury Lane to Beresford Square under Karangahape Road. The station will have two entrances – one on Mercury Lane and the other in Beresford Square on the north side of Karangahape Road.
Karangahape Station construction crews have started mining a 15 m-long connecting tunnel from the bottom of the temporary access shaft in Mercury Lane. The connection will provide the access that workers need to mine Karangahape’s two platforms.
Several heavy mining machines will be lowered into the temporary shaft - 21.5 m deep (presently 18) - on the site of the old Mercury Plaza to dig the tunnel caverns before the TBM gets to the station late 2021 at the end of the first leg of its journey from Mt Eden. The temporary access shaft which will be 21.5 m deep (presently 18) provides access to the two mined tunnels for the station platforms.
TBM arrival in October
After months of assembling and testing in China, CRL’s Link Alliance formally accepted ownership of the TBM on August 20th 2020. The TBM (7.15 m diameter, 900 t weight and 130 m long) will be used to excavate two tunnels side by side between Mt Eden and central Auckland to connect with cut-and-cover tunnels already constructed at Britomart Station. The TBM is arriving by ship from the Herrenknecht factory in Guangzhou, southern China.
The TBM will be reassembled at CRL’s Mt Eden site, where it will undergo further testing and be officially blessed for safe journeys before it starts the first of its two excavation drives next April. Both tunnels are 1.6 km long and each TBM drive will take about nine months.
For further information please click here and nz/15 for the tunnelbuilder archive, and also click this link https://www.cityraillink.co.nz/. 40/20.
