The shield goes under the construction site

The Sofia shield has traveled 450 meters since its launch and reached the middle of the future Rubtsovskaya station of the Third Interchange Circuit. This is not felt in the tunnel itself - the rings of reinforced concrete lining follow each other just as clearly. It will be partially dismantled when the soil is removed from the pit.

Specialists from Vasily Kostromenkov’s section from TO-6 are leading the “Sofia” tunnel through the left. They are also laying the right section using the Natalya complex. Both shields of the Herrenknecht company started from the installation chamber on the territory of the former Metallurg stadium and headed for the Rubtsovskaya station. And they must finish at the next station of the circuit - “Stromynki”. The route length of each TBM will be 2.5 kilometers.

The path to the workplace of the miners who service the Sofia shield is constantly lengthening. They go to the complex along a metal ladder, which they themselves build along the right wall of the tunnel. It’s hard to imagine how many hundreds of kilometers Brigadier Andrei Tereshko walked along such underground roads.

“I’ve been working in the Tunnel Squad for 30 years,” he says. - Specifically on billboards - since the early 90s. I also remember Weiss und Freitag. I have known “Herrenknecht” for a long time. The tunneling teams on both shields are headed by experienced tunnelers who have seen a lot: Sergei Dmitrichenko, Yuri Chukreev, Evgeniy Tsepelev, Andrey Tereshko and others. But none of them had ever passed a route with such a set of difficulties: after the railway they would still have to go under the Yauza, and a little further on the shields would be site No. 18. There, “Natalia” and “Sofia” will essentially have another start, since the editing chamber at the Metallurg stadium will need to be rebuilt into a convention chamber. The route itself is not easy either - it has three turns with a radius of 300 meters. This means that there will be six curves on two panels.

“We have already managed to pass under a lot of various communications in the embankment area,” adds Vasily Kostromnekov, “and have not observed any subsidence or bulging anywhere. We will try to keep it that way. We passed through the “wall in the ground” enclosing the Rubtsovskaya station pit. “Natalia” did this twice and “Sofia” did it once so far. True, the designers provided for the replacement of iron fittings with plastic ones in the appropriate places of the “wall”. But the concrete remains. And we approached the wall very carefully, with surveyor’s support - the driver was given information: how many meters, how many centimeters remained. If you approach concrete at high speed, and even with a load, you can damage the rotor by tearing off the valve.

The Natalya shield is moving along the route of the left section. By early November he had covered 550 meters. And this means that “Rubtsovskaya” has already been left behind, and ahead is the passage under the tracks of the Kazan direction of the railway. Just in that place there are turnouts on them. For “Natalia” this is the fifth route. The complex has already passed through tunnels on the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line between the Borovskoye Shosse and Solntsevo stations, and then from Ochakovo to Michurinsky Prospekt. And two more stars - in honor of two stages on the extension of the Sokolnicheskaya line.

Vladimir CHERTOV
Head of the department of mechanization of mining works of Mosmetrostroy JSC:

-The miners of this section promptly check the condition of the cutting tool of the shield. The failure of at least one element entails an increased load on the others, which can lead to breakdowns and costs.