- The Ellen tunnel boring machine of the Grand Paris Express completed the tunnel boring this Tuesday morning to allow the Fort d'Issy-Vanves-Clamart station to exit the earth.
- This future station, just a few meters from Clamart station, is the first in Greater Paris to have started construction.
Under the cobblestones, the station. The Ellen tunnel boring machine of the Grand Paris Express completed this Tuesday morning the boring of the Grand Paris Express tunnel linking Bagneux to Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine).
42 meters underground, in the construction site of the future Fort d'Issy-Vanves-Clamart station, elected officials and site managers gathered to see the 100-meter-long machine pierce the last 50 centimeters of the tunnel that will accommodate the trains of the future line 15.
"He's been digging for four years"
"It's a great operation that we have succeeded today," said Gualtiero Zamuner, one of the project managers. He's been digging for four years and today he's arrived here, perfectly where he was expected. The digging of the tunnel, he explains, is a real job of precision. At the front, the cutting wheel with a diameter of 10 meters and 135 tons, digs between 10 and 15 meters per day, crushing the rock by turning on its axis.
At the same time, the machine assembles the tunnel behind it by laying the coating using a suction machine. The rubble, sucked up as it goes, is evacuated using a screw and an extraction belt at the back of the tunnel.
A hundred operators took turns for several years at the controls of this 1,600-tonne titan, named in tribute to the sailor Ellen MacArthur - the tunnel boring machines traditionally bear the names of women.
"Three years to develop the station"
After long months underground, the tunnel boring machine must now be dismantled and removed from the site, before setting off again in an exceptional convoy for Bagneux to dig the 900 meters of tunnel which will link Bagneux to the future Arcueil-Cachan station.
At Fort d'Issy-Vanves-Clamart, “we will be able to finish the floors, before starting to build the technical rooms,” explains Gualtiero Zamuner. We will then need three years to develop the station. "
This future station, just a few meters from Clamart station, is the first in Greater Paris to have started construction. A particularly technical structure because it is located under the railway tracks and near homes.
Commissioning is scheduled for 2025, a deadline that the chairman of the Société du Grand Paris management board hopes to be able to meet despite the impact of the pandemic. On the whole project, "the impact of the Covid is reflected in a lengthening of the procedures from three to eight months", estimated Thierry Dallard Tuesday. A delay which will not necessarily postpone the commissioning, he qualified, but which “can result in an increase in production rates. "
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