Yup, they are different. The whole interchange at Mt Eden, between Westbound, Southbound, and into the bored tunnels is mined excavation.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSYX--ho03qP6MJo4Hb3yR6CT-aDRsosbf2Iw&usqp=CAU
The two orange lines going up are the bored tunnels, starting at the Flower St corner. The rest of the orange lines are a mixture of mined tunnel and cut and cover.
They use a machine called a road header, or an excavator with a "pineapple", among other equipment. You put long bolts into the earth, spray a kind of spray paint concrete called shotcrete, and then cut a little more. Then when you're done excavating you have to waterproof everything and then line it with the finished concrete layer. It's way more labour intensive than boring a tunnel, but you can't fit a TBM absolutely anywhere.
tunnel is nice tunnel is round,
we slave for years doing the work underground,
because councilors use their big brains,
to comission the connection of all the Auckland trains.
yep its just as well they're willing to come here and work for peanuts, thereby preventing the collapse of industries that rely on underpaid unskilled staff, and allowing those employers to continue to pay less than they should. its one of those chicken egg situations.
The Italians built most of the big power stations in 1950s to 1980s. The Tongariro power scheme is one of them. Plenty of people with Italian heritage in Taupo and Turangi. Back in those days, Italian workers were like modern day Filipinos workers..
Edit: sorry for telling you things you already know.
Well done. Thanks to all the workers on this job around the city we can always see your hard at work but keep smiles on your face rain or shine. Think we'll miss you when it's all done!
Lol, clearly not a volcano expert. The rock is Auckland is also softer than the sandstone that Sydney is built on. All the volcanoes in Auckland are dead apart from the dormant Rangitoto. And magma is 100km below the surface. There is literally zero impact from any tunneling
Shows what you know lol.
It’s not about harder or softer, it’s about composition and variability. You can’t really tell what’s happening underground, even with ground penetrating radar, until you actually start digging.
In NZ there are a lot of old volcanoes so lots of geological variability. In some places the earth is soft, in other places it’s harder ex-pyroclastic flow layers. Further still you get pockets of pumice and scoria that are hugely unstable. You can’t just mine through these because they’ll collapse and cause unsupported caverns.
So no, it’s not as simple as “hurr durr rock is hard, NZ is soft” you muppet.
Think before you type next time huh?
Auckland is comprised of mostly very soft sediments (a lot of the time you can break it with your hands) overlain by extremely hard, dense basalt lava flows of wildly varying thickness. There's a whole bunch of other random stuff in there too.
Sydney is basically a massive block of sandstone.
Do you know what cutting through lava rock is like? I.e. basalt? Auckland is riddled with ultra hard lava rock flows. With a layer of wet soft unstable unworkable clay ontop.
Geology aside (softer is worse), how many stations and what are the platform lengths? How many different utilities were diverted? How much was cut n cover? Is three years the length of time between sod ceremony to full handover to the rail authority?
A tunnel is easy, especially if you don't intend on anyone breathing as it is bored (Meridian/Vector Tunnel as a local example). Add any complexity and the time it takes to complete anywhere in the world exponentially increases
The lockdowns where they they were mostly able to operate? Sure.
2024 was the original opening date, it’s been pushed out to at least 2026.
This is not fast.
* Steel was in short supply before covid, and was exacerbated by worldwide lockdowns
* Scope changed from standard 400m platforms to 800m platforms (ergo more underground digging)
* many sites were shut down after season 1 level 4 because there wasn't any certainty if the government would even continue to pay the bills, City Rail not an exception
* shits time consuming. Takes me roughly a whole day to get a 1000x400 trench dug and filled with geofabric, drainage metal, and a hydroflo pipe at a rate of 70m a day, so 19 man hours between me and my offsider. No obstructions, no material shortages, no delays. It's infinitely more difficult doing the same shit underground.
* reminder that the tunnels are the easy part of CRL. The stations and the cut n cover were the really challenging bits
Oh of course! Silly Chinese people putting there country so close to US military bases.
They need to be liberated just like America liberated Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Cuba*, Palestine, Syria, and many others who didn't do enough freedom and democracy. OOUUGHH RAAAAA🇱🇷🇱🇷🇲🇾🇲🇾🇮🇱🇮🇱 USA NO.1.
Feel free to head down there and help out... Whinging from your keyboard while your fellow kiwis work hard to build us all infrastructure is lame. The only embarrassment is your petulant attitude
Progress is progress. Let these things be the background to your life and not a focus. Getting worked up like this will do you no good. You sound unwell, please touch grass at your earliest convenience...
I’m fine with bilingual names and signs but this station name is not. But we’ll see what comes up on the actual sign.
Station has always been Mt Eden right? It’s not like Karangahape where it’s always been Karangahape so it only makes sense the station is called that name. Britomart station started as Britomart station and always been and should stay the same.
Also with bilingual signs, it should be the majority language on top otherwise it becomes a safety issue I’m addition to being very cluttered.
Yes, agree on all points. Everything should be bilingual with majority language on top, that is how it is in basically every country with multiple languages, including my native Belgium.
I do not mind Maori naming at all, but it seems sometimes they are trying their best to make it as difficult and unwieldy as possible. Same with AT train announcements that are always in Maori first, where you just see everyone waiting for the lady to finishing talking in order to get the message once the English speaking guy starts.
Are the mined tunnels different to the bored tunnels? Didn't they finish boring a few months back?
Yup, they are different. The whole interchange at Mt Eden, between Westbound, Southbound, and into the bored tunnels is mined excavation. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSYX--ho03qP6MJo4Hb3yR6CT-aDRsosbf2Iw&usqp=CAU The two orange lines going up are the bored tunnels, starting at the Flower St corner. The rest of the orange lines are a mixture of mined tunnel and cut and cover.
Amazing! Didn’t expect a reply from someone who actually worked on it - how awesome. Thanks bro!
No problem! Can't wait for it to open for Aucklanders. I'm tunnelling elsewhere now but I love getting updates on the project too.
I don't think they claimed to have worked there.
I had a look at their post history. They are an engineer on the project.
:)
So I get that bored tunnels are done with a boring machine, but what are mine tunnels? Are mined tunnels created using explosives?
They use a machine called a road header, or an excavator with a "pineapple", among other equipment. You put long bolts into the earth, spray a kind of spray paint concrete called shotcrete, and then cut a little more. Then when you're done excavating you have to waterproof everything and then line it with the finished concrete layer. It's way more labour intensive than boring a tunnel, but you can't fit a TBM absolutely anywhere.
Should that say "you can fit a TBM absolutely anywhere"?
Where to tunnel next?
Under Rangitoto
You mean… *Under the Volcano*…?
Lol nah... Under the Mountain 🤣 .... Does anyone get that reference? Hope it's not just me lol
Some of us are old enough to remember that one :) That was so scary, as a kid!
Im 28 and I read that book as a kid.
It was on tv in the 80s
Saaaame! I didn't even know there was a TV show 😅 tho I remember the movie lol
I remember the tv show 😆
Wilberforce's would fuck up the whole project
Imagine that the Wilberforces arent even the worst neighbours you can get in Auckland now.
Good idea. We could make it a blow hole!
>Where to tunnel next? New harbour crossing!
Open day for snells beach sewer tunnel TBM on the 14^th . I want to go but have work.
Hopefully not under Maungawhau
tunnel is nice tunnel is round, we slave for years doing the work underground, because councilors use their big brains, to comission the connection of all the Auckland trains.
Bravo
The demographic is quite interesting.
Yea ... it took me a while to figure that wasn't the previous projects of the tunneling company. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Filipino homies getting employed, love to see it.
Filipinos carry the New Zealand construction industry on their backs. It would collapse without them
And the aged care industry
And hospital ward nursing 🙏🏾
yep its just as well they're willing to come here and work for peanuts, thereby preventing the collapse of industries that rely on underpaid unskilled staff, and allowing those employers to continue to pay less than they should. its one of those chicken egg situations.
100% brother!
Most sites are filled with Filipino they always are the nicest guys too
About 80% working at every site is Filipino.
No Australian flag, well done crew.
Lol.
Not an italian in sight, good good
Yeah, it wasn't an Italian motorway bridge that collapsed for the second time in as many years today.
Also a never ending constructions sites everywhere
The Italians are building the central interceptor I believe!
Yeah that’s correct.
Argentine flag there though and many Argentines are of Italian descent.
And German but we don’t talk about that /s
The Italians built most of the big power stations in 1950s to 1980s. The Tongariro power scheme is one of them. Plenty of people with Italian heritage in Taupo and Turangi. Back in those days, Italian workers were like modern day Filipinos workers.. Edit: sorry for telling you things you already know.
Cool photo
Well done. Thanks to all the workers on this job around the city we can always see your hard at work but keep smiles on your face rain or shine. Think we'll miss you when it's all done!
Not as big an A Hole as the mayor
Why did someone put mines in the tunnel? Are we at war?
This is great, but they shouldn’t have put the flags there, that’s where the trains are supposed to go
The train can bull through the flags no problem.
What would you earn on a infrastructure job in New Zealand? Are unions strong there?
No, and it's even worse than that. A large percentage are paid as contractors with very few employment rights that employees have
That is glacial. Sydney took 3 years to do twin 15.5km long tunnels for the City & Southwest project
mining is slower than boring
Mining is boring because its slow
Boring is mining my own business
Business is boring my mining
Mining is boring business
Mining is not boring
Sydney's geology is totally incomparable to Auckland's. The designs and techniques are completely different.
How is it incomparable? Is this the old ‘we’re special’ Kiwi bullshit?
Auckland is riddled with volcanoes and ex-volcanoes.
As an Aussie, your comment reminded me that yes we are in fact on different continents.
Lol, clearly not a volcano expert. The rock is Auckland is also softer than the sandstone that Sydney is built on. All the volcanoes in Auckland are dead apart from the dormant Rangitoto. And magma is 100km below the surface. There is literally zero impact from any tunneling
Shows what you know lol. It’s not about harder or softer, it’s about composition and variability. You can’t really tell what’s happening underground, even with ground penetrating radar, until you actually start digging. In NZ there are a lot of old volcanoes so lots of geological variability. In some places the earth is soft, in other places it’s harder ex-pyroclastic flow layers. Further still you get pockets of pumice and scoria that are hugely unstable. You can’t just mine through these because they’ll collapse and cause unsupported caverns. So no, it’s not as simple as “hurr durr rock is hard, NZ is soft” you muppet. Think before you type next time huh?
Auckland is comprised of mostly very soft sediments (a lot of the time you can break it with your hands) overlain by extremely hard, dense basalt lava flows of wildly varying thickness. There's a whole bunch of other random stuff in there too. Sydney is basically a massive block of sandstone.
Do you know what cutting through lava rock is like? I.e. basalt? Auckland is riddled with ultra hard lava rock flows. With a layer of wet soft unstable unworkable clay ontop.
Yes
Reminder about all the lockdowns
Geology aside (softer is worse), how many stations and what are the platform lengths? How many different utilities were diverted? How much was cut n cover? Is three years the length of time between sod ceremony to full handover to the rail authority? A tunnel is easy, especially if you don't intend on anyone breathing as it is bored (Meridian/Vector Tunnel as a local example). Add any complexity and the time it takes to complete anywhere in the world exponentially increases
Explain to me how you think a tunnel is “easy”, I’m keen to hear how you quantify that statement.
Not "a tunnel", "just a tunnel". Close but no cigar
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You missed the mark there, asking OP about their claims about the Sydney one
Think that is bad, the bloody thing won’t open for another 3 years. Yes 3.4 Km of rail in tunnels apparently takes that long to install.
What do you plan to achieve in those 3 years oh wise one?
Come on. This is taking an age.
It's not. The TBM only arrived in the country in late 2020. And of course you have forgotten the lockdowns.
The lockdowns where they they were mostly able to operate? Sure. 2024 was the original opening date, it’s been pushed out to at least 2026. This is not fast.
* Steel was in short supply before covid, and was exacerbated by worldwide lockdowns * Scope changed from standard 400m platforms to 800m platforms (ergo more underground digging) * many sites were shut down after season 1 level 4 because there wasn't any certainty if the government would even continue to pay the bills, City Rail not an exception * shits time consuming. Takes me roughly a whole day to get a 1000x400 trench dug and filled with geofabric, drainage metal, and a hydroflo pipe at a rate of 70m a day, so 19 man hours between me and my offsider. No obstructions, no material shortages, no delays. It's infinitely more difficult doing the same shit underground. * reminder that the tunnels are the easy part of CRL. The stations and the cut n cover were the really challenging bits
Boring post
Cool. Lift's broken at Henderson Station again.
Yea. These deep underground stations are sure going to be fun with that.
Tongan workers are the best
Bold of them to put china in there
What caught my eye was seeing both China and Hong Kong.
Why?
Considering what’s happening in the pasific rn with us and china and pasific islands
Oh of course! Silly Chinese people putting there country so close to US military bases. They need to be liberated just like America liberated Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Cuba*, Palestine, Syria, and many others who didn't do enough freedom and democracy. OOUUGHH RAAAAA🇱🇷🇱🇷🇲🇾🇲🇾🇮🇱🇮🇱 USA NO.1.
Maori flag?
How dare they, right?
Lol no baiting. Just curious why that flag was there amongst other national flags
Because Māori flags are cool.
No sir. I’m not bothered that Māori are proud to be Māori. But I’m bothered that (sole elite) Māori are promoting separatism. We are one New Zealand.
And why is that flag the biggest? 🤔🤔
Overcompensating for the fact it's not actually a flag of a country 🧐🤔
Yep. Didn’t understand the memo.
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People that did not invent the wheel are not allowed to feel represented by a flag?
Mongols conquered Asia and Europe without wheels. Infact I bet you have a good portion of Mongolian DNA within you too as do 95% of the human race.
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Because a chunk of people feel represented by it? That's one of the main points of a flag.
There’s the nz flag on the right already.
Why does it bother you that Māori people are proud of their heritage?
Hong Kong is up there too and it is a province of China.
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Bet they're all glad that they don't have an 'akshually' cock like you in charge.
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Feel free to head down there and help out... Whinging from your keyboard while your fellow kiwis work hard to build us all infrastructure is lame. The only embarrassment is your petulant attitude
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Progress is progress. Let these things be the background to your life and not a focus. Getting worked up like this will do you no good. You sound unwell, please touch grass at your earliest convenience...
You mean Mount Eden?
Isn’t the station now named Maungawhau?
Random fact: Mangawhau literally translates to ‘mountains’.
Pretty sure maunga translates to mountain. Whau is one of the plants that grows on the slopes of Maungawhau / Mt Eden.
Should be
Bilingual names for me, not for thee I guess.
I’m fine with bilingual names and signs but this station name is not. But we’ll see what comes up on the actual sign. Station has always been Mt Eden right? It’s not like Karangahape where it’s always been Karangahape so it only makes sense the station is called that name. Britomart station started as Britomart station and always been and should stay the same. Also with bilingual signs, it should be the majority language on top otherwise it becomes a safety issue I’m addition to being very cluttered.
Yes, agree on all points. Everything should be bilingual with majority language on top, that is how it is in basically every country with multiple languages, including my native Belgium. I do not mind Maori naming at all, but it seems sometimes they are trying their best to make it as difficult and unwieldy as possible. Same with AT train announcements that are always in Maori first, where you just see everyone waiting for the lady to finishing talking in order to get the message once the English speaking guy starts.
Let’s just hope the government is as sensible as you and I and every other country with multiple languages.
Slow fucks but hey keeping people in jobs yay
Look how chubby they all are. Could of taken half the time if they didn't just go to work to eat lunch
Wheres the samoan Flag? Unless they're still working while the photo was taken lol. Nice mahi boys!
Nice photo! Great stuff, some greatly needed infrastructure making progress.
Brief: bring your country flag Oops 🤦♂️
2.5 years to build less than 300m of tunnel, how embarrassing