NEWS
VIC
Metro Tunnel borers named
Four tunnel boring machines will be used to build the Metro Tunnel project beneath Melbourne’s CBD.
GROUND-BREAKING WOMEN HAVE BEEN recognised in the naming of the four new tunnel boring machines (TBMs) which will drill twin ninekilometre rail tunnels beneath Melbourne’s CBD. Four TBMs will be used to drill the Metro Tunnel, which will create a new crosscity connection between the Sunbury and Cranbourne-Pakenham lines, freeing up room on Metro Trains Melbourne’s City Loop and the wider network. Joan is the first TBM, named after Joan Kirner, who in 1990 became Victoria’s first female premier, and Australia’s third female head of government. The second TBM, on its way to Australia, will be named Meg, after Australian cricket captain Meg Lanning, who recently led the team to victory at the ICC Women’s Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies. The third and fourth TBMs will be named after wartime military nurse Alice Appleford, and Victoria’s first female MP, Millie Peacock. Appleford served as a nurse in Egypt and France in the World War I, and was awarded the military Medal for Gallantry. She served within the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service
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in World War II, and in 1949 was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal, the highest honour of the Red Cross. Peacock became Victoria’s first elected parliamentarian when she won the by-election in Allandale in 1933, replacing her husband Sir Alexander Peacock, after his death. Each TBM is 120 metres long and weighs more than 1,100 tonnes. The Andrews Government says each is designed to bore through Melbourne’s unique ground conditions. The four TBMs will be deployed in pairs: two at the new North Melbourne station pit, and two at the new Anzac station pit. The machines will bore away from the CBD, towards Kensington and South Yarra respectively, where they will then be recovered, dismantled, and brought back to their starting points, so they can then drill towards the CBD. “These four massive machines have been named after ground-breaking women who’ve made significant contributions to our state and our country,” premier Daniel Andrews said. “We’re getting on with building the public transport Victoria needs so more trains can run more often to and from the suburbs.”
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Groundbreaking women have been recognised in the naming of the four new tunnel boring machines
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