London Crossrail Project – Will Be Largest Civil Project in Europe

From ENR:

In the mountains of Peru a tunnel-boring machine named “Pacha Mama” is grinding through the heart of the Andes under rock as deep as 6,890 ft. It is carving away at a 20.2-kilometer-long tunnel through the South American Continental Divide to deliver water to arid coastal farmland.

This is a really interesting project, known as the Los Olmos project, and a nice little article. Normally for a civil tunnel project you drill geotechnical holes beforehand to know what kind of material you’re dealing with. In this case, because of the depth, they don’t have that luxury, so all decisions will be made on the fly. The depth of the tunnel creates some very challenging rock mechanics and logistics problems as well! (Illustration by Odebrecht)

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The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) recently christened a new Tunnel Boring Machine ‘Lady Bird’ in honor of former first lady Claudia Alta ‘Lady Bird’ Taylor Johnson. The roughly 23-ft diameter […]

[Updated May 26, 2011] A new, cleaner, longer version of the video has surfaced on YouTube recently.  You can see it embedded below.  It includes some footage of attempts to "water bomb" the rock loose […]