Two 19th century railway tunnels in Germany are being enlarged and renovated with minimal disruption to services, thanks to an established construction method enabled by a newly-launched Herrenknecht system.
The 34th edition of construction and mining machinery trade fair Bauma took place in April in Munich, Germany. Apart from showcasing its tunnelling technologies to hundreds of thousands of attendees, German manufacturer Herrenknecht celebrated winning the fair’s Innovation Award of the ‘Machine Technology’ category for its Tunnel Enlargement System (TES).
TES has been developed to enable the use of the tunnel-in-tunnel method for the enlargement of existing tunnels. “The idea of tunnel-in-tunnel method is about 40 to 50 years old,” says contractor Porr tunnelling unit manager for Germany Harald Burgstaller, who notes that it has already been successfully implemented in projects in Germany and other European countries.