Drilling has been completed on a new double-track railway tunnel linking Gothenburg and Lund in Sweden.
The two 8.7 km tunnels, which run through the Hallandsås horst, will replace an existing single-track above-ground railway, removing a major bottleneck on the Västkustbanans line.
Per Rydberg, project manager on the Hallandsås project, described the benefits of the new tunnel as like replacing ‘a narrow gravel road with a multi-lane highway’.
The majority of the Västkustbanans is double-tracked apart from the Hallandsås section between Bastad and Förslöv, which reduces the number of trains that can use the line and restricts vehicles to 80 km/h.
TBM Asa broke through the northern side of Hallandsås last week, marking the completion of tunnelling works.
Infrastructure manager Trafikverket said that once the new line is complete in 2015 it will boost capacity from four trains an hour to 24 and increase operating speeds to 200 km/h.
