October 5 2021
On Saturday 25 September the ATS young members held a site visit to the Cross River Rail in Brisbane. The event drew great interest and you had to be fast to secure a spot as one of the 35 attendees. There was a great mix of young members in attendance with a strong representation of students (around 50%) and young engineers who had not been involved much in tunnelling and were keen to see what all the hype is about!
The site visit kicked off with presentations from Alena Conrads (Project Engineer with the TBM Tunnels) and Mathieson Stosic (Site Engineer with the Mined Tunnels) who gave an overview of the project and the technical details involved with constructing the station box, mined tunnels and TBM tunnels. The presentations were very informative and gave everyone background to the works we were about to see.
The attendees were able to choose from three tours which would visit different aspects of the site. Group 1 went down into the mined tunnels from the Woolloongabba station box towards Boggo Road, getting a tour of the caverns, cross passages and mined tunnel works along the way. Group 2 headed for a tour of the station box surface works and TBM cross passages and Group 3 went into the TBM tunnels stopping at cross passages along the way.
Engineers from CBGUJV lead each group and talked through the various parts of the project as they went, explaining finer details and answering many inquisitive questions from the attendees. After getting our boots dirty for two hours underground we resurfaced, debriefed and headed to Easy Times Brewing for some socialising prior to Riverfire and the AFL Grand Final.
Hearing the conversations afterwards, it was clear the site visit to Cross River Rail was a huge success, sparking a lot of interest and thought from the next generation of engineers. A special thanks goes out to CBGUJV and the CRR Delivery Authority for supporting the event and making us feel very welcome! We hope to organise another young members site visit next year to have a look at the station and tunnel fit-out.
