Lot 1A Battipaglia-Romagnano represents a first significant milestone of the Salerno - Reggio Calabria HS railway. It will be a strategic route to connect the northern-southern axis of the Italian peninsula, allowing the South of Italy to improve its modern and fucntional interconnections in the related territories. The new connection will allow the various areas that are currently excluded from the service, when working fully, to have access to the HS railway system. These include: Cilento and Vallo di Diano, the Ionian coast and the higher and lower areas of Cosenza, the area of the Port of Gioia Tauro and the "Reggino" area.  

Lot 1A measures 35 km in length, and it will be possible to travel up to 300 km/h along it. The route travels approximately 18 km underground. It foresees 8 artificial tunnels for 4 km and 12 natural tunnels, of which 8 in total measure approximately 13 km. These will be excavated using 4 TBMs. There will also be 19 new viaducts measuring in total approximately 6 km.

The area concerned by the intervention of Lot 1A is located in the province of Salerno. Particularly, the railway rout develops from Battipaglia station crossing the municipalities of Battipaglia, Eboli, Campagna, Contursi Terme, Sicignano degli Alburni and Buccino. At Romagnano, a junction will also be built to interconnect the future HS line to the existing Potenza-Metaponto one

Webuild's largest TBM in Europe, general features

The TBM CREC 1418, the first to be used on the SA/RC, is a mechanical mole, a tunnel boring machine that is extremely innovative. It will bore the terrain with its cutting-head that measures 13.46 metres in diameter, making it the largest TBM to be used by Webuild in Italy and Europe. It is also a mobile factory as when it excavates, it also lines the tunnels, so that when it has passed, the tunnel will be complete. The TBM measures approximately 130 metres and weighs 4,000 tons. It is equipped with 18 engines generating 10 MW. Working 24/7, it will see over 100 highly-specialised workers engaged, some operating it, some for its maintenance.  The TBM 1418 is an EPB (Earth pressure Balance) machine capable of avoiding ground-level collapses, thanks to the earth pressure function within the excavating chamber. 

Sustainability and Innovation

The Lot 1A TBM is a "green TBM" that can lower by 20% the TBM's energy consumption (KWh) with some of its innovative features that reduce energy consumption and that were developed by the Webuild Group with the supplier. Like the "Eco Cruise" and the “Automatic Utilities Management System”, a highly-efficient component that allows optimizing the machine's parameters compared to traditional standards. These components allow regulating the TBM's functioning parameters to maximise both the advancement speed, while also reducing energy consumption with automatic switch-off of unused systems. 

The TBM is moreover equipped with improvement systems and cutting-edge technologies that allow not just to speed up the machine's advancement in highly driving contexts, but also to optimize the tunnel lining phase, increasing the machine's production performance. In particular, adopting Continuous Mining allows carrying out the installation of the lining segment ring made of precast concrete as the TBM advances, almost totally eliminating the dead times normally needed to assembly the curved lining ring. These improvements will allow to speed up the excavation, maximising the continuous advancement, but also to reduce any need to carry out programmed stops of the machine to allow maintenance programmes on the machine and on the essential equipment used for the entire excavation and advancement. The continuous mining operation modality is as of today one of the most advanced technologies when building projects with a TBM, which significantly has driven the technological evolution of the EPB type machines. 

The TBM is also equipped with a Robot that is used for high-pressure flushing, within the excavation chamber, therefore preventing clogging phenomena typical of clay and other type of terrains.