Around 18km of Australian-made rail has been delivered to the Metro Tunnel’s eastern entrance in South Yarra, with work starting in October to install the rail that will carry trains through the new tunnel.
More than 100 lengths of rail were delivered over 4 nights to the eastern entrance, before crews unloaded and stacked them ready for use. This follows the first rail delivery in February at the tunnels’ western entrance in Kensington, making a total of 40km of rail now ready to be laid.
The track design being used in the Metro Tunnel is more modern and requires less maintenance than conventional tracks that use sleepers and rocks. Crews have been working in recent months to lay high-performance precast concrete panels through the twin tunnels as a base for the rail.
There are 4000 concrete panels cast in 300 different shapes to account for the varying curvature and elevation of the tunnels as they wind from Kensington to South Yarra up to 30m underground.
To install the rail, workers will progressively clip each 165m length to the concrete panels and weld them together to form a continuous rail line along the length of the tunnels.
When it opens in 2025, the Metro Tunnel will create capacity for more than half a million extra passengers a week during peak times across the city’s train network.
Learn more about Metro Tunnel construction.