The Tunnelling Podcast

To look at a map of Europe is to see a disconnected landmass. Sometimes described as a ‘peninsula of peninsulas', the world's second smallest continent is naturally divided. Even from the centre, it is not always easy to travel to the extremes. Take the Alps for example, since ancient times, they have proven to be...

There are up to 600 disused railway tunnels dotted around the British countryside. Some of these find new life as pedestrian tunnels or storage facilities. This week we are examining the Catesby Tunnel in Northamptonshire, which was perfect for a particularly unusual revamp. Photo credit: Ian Rob / Catesby Tunnel-North Portal Resources For more information on the...

Frustrated with the costs of tunnelling and Hyperloop's resulting lack of viability, Elon Musk threw down the gauntlet to the tunnelling industry and asked if it could innovate to bring advance rates up to the speed of a snail. In this episode we speak to one of the entrants of the ‘Not a Boring Competition',...

This week's episode looks at the long-term expansion plans for the Second Avenue Subway in New York City, as it moves to the final planning phase. The project was first proposed nearly 100 years ago, are the 2020s the decade it is finally going to get off the ground? Photo credit: MTA

For The Tunnelling Podcast's first “spotlight” episode on waterproofing, we're looking at the tunnel seals supplied by Trelleborg's marine and infrastructure operation for the Fehmarnbelt tunnel, the world's longest immersed tunnel for both vehicles and trains. 

Whatever happened to the Whittaker TBM once deployed in Folkstone Warren, in Kent? This week we look at the intriguing history of this 100 year old machine… Guest Dr Oliver Carpenter, Curator of Infrastructure and Built Environment, The Science Museum Photo credit: The Science Museum

A few years ago, two men met to discuss an idea they'd had for a tidal energy project. The idea called for an array of tunnels, rather than the more traditional lagoons. But essentially as the tide comes in and goes out, you can draw the energy off it. It was a fantastic idea, but...

In this week's tunnelling episode we look at the challenges Texas faces to its water supply and how the recently awarded Section 19 Long Tunnel Crossing, a critical part of the Integrated Pipeline Project, will help bring much-needed water to North Texas.

Singapore's Land Transport Authority has reached the half-way mark for completing its Circle Line Stage 6, which closes the Circle Line loop by connecting HarbourFront to Marina Bay stations. We take a look at the recently completed tunnelling works for CCL6.

This week we are taking you to Virginia and looking at The Big Walker and East River Mountain Tunnels, which burrow through the Appalachian Mountains and cross the border between two states. This impressive project completed 50 years ago, and was the most expensive construction job that West Virginia Department of Highways and Virginia Department...

If the Ancient Egyptians had made use of nuclear fuel, their engineers would have needed to find a solution to store the waste not just to today, but far into the future. Fortunately, modern engineers are up to the task. The most advanced project for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel is ‘Onkalo' in Finland. ...

A career spent in the evolving field of ventilation has yielded a number of insights to Mosen's Fathi Tarada.  In this episode we tell the story of how the Bahrain oil industry is to thank for a man fighting to bring tunnelling closer to Net Zero, how new ventilation technologies could influence tunnel design, and...

High Speed 2 is the UK's latest transport megaproject. Billed as the largest ever investment in the country's rail, its first phase will link London in the south via 230km of high-speed rail with Birmingham in the West Midlands. With a focus on innovation and new technologies available, the project is determined to avoid the...

Faced with a need to free surface space for their expanding town, and a reliance on the local quarry for foundation material, the people the town of Drammen in Norway came up with a unique solution. A spiral tunnel would provide all of the granite they needed, would allow them to close the quarry, and...

Vienna, the capital city of Austria is also known worldwide as The City of Music and this musical metropolis is fine tuning the way that it constructs underground. In order to expand its metro system it has turned to the use of hydraulic props to hold back the pressure from the earth during construction of...

Brisbane has an Achilles heel. But luckily, it is one that engineers are on the verge of correcting. As the capital of Queensland, a resource-rich state in Australia's northeast, it is a vital hub for the economy and the movement of people around the country. The problem lies with the iconic river that bears the...

In this episode we join Yannis Vazaios on site in North Acton, London. Yannis is a Geotechnical Engineer working on High Speed 2's Victoria Road site as the designer's representative. But this story begins 15 years ago in Athens. Yannis finds himself taking a degree he did not expect but nonetheless is falling in love...

The San Fernando Earthquake of 9 February 1971 caught experts completely off-guard. The event galvanised a generation of engineers, and improvements are still being made today that can be traced back to that one day. One recognisable figure from the tunnelling industry today, was still in education at the time. He had earned his bachelor's...

Every good superhero universe has its origins story. Hagerbach’s begins with Rudolf Amberg, looking to innovate and find new efficiency savings for his iron mine. So began a 50-year journey from testing equipment and explosives, to fire and tunnel safety simulations, and ever more creative uses for underground space. Ultimately the mining industry in Switzerland...

Mechanisation is the most reliable way to ensure the safety of workers in any construction underground. In this episode we look at the growth in mechanised methodologies for shaft-sinking And this technology has its origins in the 1970s, but it is one that has seen a surge in interest over the last two decades… and...

This is the third and final episode of our three-part special looking at the delivery of megaprojects. In this episode we examine the lessons learned from two of the most iconic tunnelling projects of recent times: London’s Crossrail and New York’s East Side Access. Crossrail was the largest infrastructure project in Europe. Weaving in and...

Our sister podcast Engineering Matters produced this three-part special looking at the delivery of megaprojects to mark its 100th episode. In this second episode, we look at how a client can assess the scale of the task of delivering an impossibly complex scheme, such as a megaproject and supplement gaps in its skillset with industry...

Megaprojects are among the most complex and challenging of society’s undertakings. Each is grand is scope and due to the scale, none are ever built twice. Although they leverage the resources and political will of a nation, most encounter cost and schedule overruns, damaging reputations and souring public support. Our sister podcast Engineering Matters produced...

A career spent working on, teaching about, and investigating trenchless projects in Canada has given one geotechnical engineer decades of lessons and anecdotes to draw on. He now finds himself an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, and Executive Director of the Centre for...

The Thames Tunnel, an 11m wide, 6m high and 396m long tunnel cuts 23m under the river Thames when measured at high tide. It is the first known tunnel to be excavated under a navigable river. And most critically for today’s episode it is the first use of a tunnelling shield, which some 200 years...

Set in the West Midlands county of Staffordshire is a former Royal Forest called Cannock Chase. It is part misty, secluded woodland and part undulating moorland. As you head up to the north of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the landscape becomes tame and you enter the Shugborough Estate, some 10km to the east...

Kathmandu is set in a bowl valley in the foothills of the Himalayas. It has more heritage sites than any other city in the world and is the economic powerhouse for the developing nation of Nepal. It has a bustling society and an irreplaceable culture, but what it does not have is a public transport...

Right now companies around the world are competing in a global race to prove that a new transport revolution is just a few years away. Using high speed transit through low pressure tubes speeds of 1100km/hr per hour are theoretically possible, bringing cities closer together than ever before. Elon Musk who kickstarted the industry naming...

There is something fishy going on in the Hagerbach Test Gallery, deep in the Glarus Alps in Switzerland. Today the former iron mine is a place of invention, where new underground technologies are explored, tried and tested. In one of the 80m caverns two tanks of Rainbow Trout swim around, unaware that their waste products...

Maintaining a tunnel requires many hours of dedicated work by highly skilled engineers. And as our network of tunnels expands, so does the maintenance demand. Asset owners and local authorities have been under pressure for years to find a cost-effective way of monitoring and maintaining their underground infrastructure. And now, engineers in Switzerland have turned...

Digital twins can revolutionise our knowledge of underground structures in real time, during construction and in operation. These virtual replicants of real world assets enriched with real time and contextual data are giving more information about our underground structures than ever before. Assets then become more cost effective to design, to build, to maintain, and...

In this episode we take a dive into the Indian tunnelling market to understanding what is driving the growth in tunnelling, see what opportunities exist for overseas tunnellers and hear how young Indian engineers are being drawn into a career underground. With a population of nearly 1.4 billion, and a burgeoning middle class, India has...

Upgrades to transport infrastructure create temporary but crippling disruptions to the service. Expanding transport capacity on metro lines is an essential element of urban development. However, carrying out major upgrades to existing lines has meant temporarily denying its service to the existing passengers. Until now. In the charming city of Toulouse in southern France, a...

Carving out the underground space for railways, roads, waterways, urban development and even fishing and farming is how some men and women spend their entire careers. The tunnelling industry offers great opportunities for travel and adventure at the cutting edge of our understanding or geology, rock and soil mechanics and machines. Keith Bannerman happened upon...

How a new 2.5km cable pulled railway will connect Luton Airport’s terminal to the UK rail network boosting future growth. Today rail passengers arriving at the airport must disembark from the train and finish their journey on a shuttle bus. But not for much longer. Deep sheet piles are currently being driven into the ground...

A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years in 1930, the third billion in 30 years in 1960, the fourth billion in 15 years in 1974, and the fifth...

In March 1999, the Mont Blanc tunnel fire claimed the lives of 38 tunnel users and one fire fighter. For decades debate has raged over the best approach to tackling a fire, saving life and the asset. Tunnel fires are a regular and unavoidable feature of road tunnel operation. Now, two decades since the Mont...

Every day, beneath our feet, teams of men and women dedicate their lives to unearthing the underground space. As growing populations and urbanisation mount pressure on the already strained infrastructure of our cities, these men and women work round the clock to relieve the surface from our roads, rail, waterways and more. Tunnelling is still...