A new milestone for the BBT project, just a few days after the celebration of the arrival of the Flavia TBM at Brenner. Today another breakthrough took place in the west main tunnel, between the H41 “Sill Gorge - Pfons” and H21 “Sill Gorge” lots.
In the H41 “Sill Gorge - Pfons” lot, approximately 3.4 km of the west main tunnel have been excavated toward Innsbruck using drilling and blasting. Using this excavation method, which requires the drilling of boreholes to be filled with explosive and set off, the miners have blasted their way through the Viller Berg mountain to a depth of 400 metres and have created an uninterrupted connection between the two Austrian construction lots, “Sill Gorge - Pfons” and “Sill Gorge”.
Romed Insam, BBT SE, project manager for Lot H41 “Sill Gorge - Pfons”, expresses his satisfaction at having reached this milestone: "With today’s breakthrough between the Sill Gorge-Pfons and Sill Gorge lots, we are proud to announce that we have reached a new milestone in the BBT project. Thanks to this important achievement, both the stretches of main tunnel in these two lots are now connected, creating an uninterrupted 14-km stretch. We would like to express our deepest appreciation to the workers and to everyone who has contributed, with their competence and tireless efforts, to achieving this goal.”
Harald Goldberger, CEO of the temporary consortium for H41, says: “The H41 consortium has successfully completed the excavation works on the two main tunnels from Ahrental to the Sill Gorge, thanks to excellent cooperation on the part of everyone involved. All the challenges along the way were overcome thanks to everyone’s tireless efforts.”
Katharina Willi, the tunnel patroness, made these remarks at today’s event: “It is a great pleasure to be here today. This project is taking shape day by day in the depths of the mountains and will soon come to completion. It is a project that will link northern and southern Europe.”
Blasting excavation works have been completed in the main tunnel stretches in the H41 Sill Gorge-Pfons lot
Today’s breakthrough marks the completion of the stretches in the two main east and west tunnels which were excavated towards the Sill Gorge using drilling and blasting . The total length of the excavated stretches was approximately 5.8 km. From now on, only short sections between the main tunnels and the exploratory tunnel (e.g. connecting side tunnels) will be constructed using the traditional method.
