Some Serious Equipment
Tip drill? Sorta—it's the cutter head, which will do all the heavy cutting for the Second Avenue Subway. (Courtesy MTA)
It would appear the Second Avenue Subway is really, truly happening. Not to have doubted all the construction work that’s gone on so far, but we have been-there-done-that about half-a-dozen times over the past century. Now, however, the 200-ton Cutter Head has arrived, the main piece of the Tunnel Boring Machine that will begin carving out the tunnels for the first phase of the new line. The MTA posted some pretty cool pics of the device, including the one above, on its Facebook page. And if that weren’t socially networked enough, there’s a YouTube flick of the thing being lowered underground with a soundtrack that sounds oddly like that of a softcore sex scene in some ’90s movie. Second Avenue Sagas points out that this is largely “symbolic,” as the real challenge, technically and fiscally, is not digging but building the lines and stations. That said, we still wonder if all this money wouldn’t be better spent on maintaining service than pushing ahead with capital projects, even if it does mean their nth death. While you ponder, the flick and more pics after the jump.
Putting together the Tunnel Boring Machine.
The beginning of the beginning.
Watch out, as that sucker's 22 feet in diameter.
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Does NYC have its own one of these? Or is it rented from a company that owns it?
Does NYC have their own one of these or is it rented?
I’m pretty sure they’re renting it. That’s one of the reasons they say they can’t stop or even necessarily slow down on projects like this and the 7-Train extension, because it actually costs more money, not less, because of the cost of simply bringing in equipment.
You can find lots of additional photos and information on this blog site:
The Launch Box
http://thelaunchbox.blogspot.com/
They get shipped around to different projects. This tunnel-boring machine is supposedly about 30 years old. It has been used before in NYC, to dig a different subway tunnel, but most recently it was used for a sewer project in Connecticut.
[...] *Digging* Some Serious Equipment http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/7372 So they’re at least actually digging a big hole for the Second Ave. subway so that’s [...]