Saturday 29 March 2014

Tampines Central

The Tampines station will be an interchange station with the existing East West Line. Located next to the Tampines bus interchange, it will serve commuters going to the office buildings and commercial buildings at the town centre, such as CPF Tampines Building, Tampines One and Tampines Mall. The station will also double up as a Civil Defence shelter. No tunnelling works are involved in this contract. This is KTC's first metro project as main con.
Excavation to formation level
Strutted Excavation
Concreting the subway level
With thanks to KTC Civil E&C

Thursday 20 March 2014

March Tunnel Progress

C937 - Breakthrough of TBM 2 at Chinatown on Mar 24
C917A
Closure of centre carriageway to conduct SI
C917A
S602 has resumed tunnelling though the battle against ground is not in their favour. Downstream along Maple Ave MacDow is conducting SI along lane 3 in anticipation of granite currently challenged by its sister TBM.

S603 at 710 rings (Mar 20, ~72% completed)
TBM has slowed down to 1 ring per day. It is crossing the 2nd diversion canal at the moment, concluding the end of the section weakened by granite. Cutterhead is being replaced every 3-4 days. This is alike the challenge faced by STEC's TBM1 near Stevens station last year. The tunnel route is expected to be trouble-free from here till breakthrough point at SAV, exception of another possible section of granite lying below the junction of Sixth Avenue.

C918A
S605 crossing the canal beneath the Farrer Flyover
C918A
S605 at 446 rings (Mar 19, ~66% completed)
TBM has paced down. Breakthrough together with S603 should only take place in May.


Remaining gantry crane standing on site
 STEC has decommission 2 of its gantry cranes at Newton the past week. The remaining one along the BP tunnel should be taken down by the end of March. Backfilling of the shafts are starting.

With thanks to Stefano for his contribution.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

C937 breakthrough coming

Contract 937 is for the construction of Fort Canning station and tunnels to Chinatown and Bencoolen stations. Contractor GS E&C is eagerly awaiting the breakthrough of their machine boring the Bukit Panjang-bound tunnel towards Chinatown tomorrow. The reception shaft located next to the subordinate courts will receive the machine that bored underneath the Singapore River riverbed and forms the lower of the two tunnels that will eventually connect the stage 3 station to Chinatown interchange. In order to pass through a tight corridor, constrained by the Central mall and Central Expressway (CTE), the tunnels have to stack - running one on top of the other. The typical construction sequence is to bore the lower tunnel to reduce the amount of movement encountered subsequently. This lessens the amount of stress that the completed tunnel is subjected to. We look forward to bringing you more details once the breakthrough is accomplished tomorrow.

Thursday 6 March 2014

S604 Breakthroughs

DTL2 Tunnel Chart for March

S604 has just docked at Botanic Gardens this afternoon after having completed it's drive from TKK station. This is the second last BP bound tunnel to complete within stage 2 of the Downtown Line. Below shows a short flashback of the machine from delivery when the project was still under Alpine. More photos on the breakthrough will be updated.
TBM arrives by ship to the port