REM work in Mount Royal Tunnel is 'like when you buy an old house'

It takes dozens of experts to plan the minute-to-minute movements for every worker in the century-old Mount Royal Tunnel as the project enters the final phase to accommodate the Réseau express métropolitain.

"It's a challenge every day to do this work," said Sébastien Forgues, the logistics co-ordinator in the tunnel. "It's difficult work to do because we're in an environment that's very complicated in an enclosed space."

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On the heels of yet another delay for the nearly $8-billion REM, reporters were invited on Wednesday to see the historic tunnel, which is where the most complications lie in bringing the light-rail network into full service. The REM currently runs along five stations, between Central Station and Brossard. The plans call for 26 stations to cover 67 kilometres, linking Deux-Montagnes, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue and Trudeau airport. More than 500 trains per day will be running through the tunnel, roughly every two minutes during peak periods.

The tunnel itself was a remarkable feat of engineering when built back in 1912. It took just one year to dig the tunnel, which links Town of Mount Royal to Central Station. Explosives were used for parts of it, but most of the work was done by hand, with crews digging on either end and meeting in the middle, with just a one-inch difference between the two ends of the tunnel. It then took them another five years to equip the tunnel for trains.

It's expected the work to renovate the tunnel will take roughly five years in all. Authorities said Wednesday they expect the tunnel to be open for trains sometime in 2025.

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"We feel comfortable with a delivery date of 2025," said Jean-Philippe Pelletier, the director for the western phase of the REM project.

Since taking possession of the tunnel in May 2020, crews have been working 24 hours per day, seven days a week to renovate, shore up and refit it so that it can serve as the REM's main branch. They started with stripping the tunnel until all the rails were off, and any electric wiring and circuitry was gone. They worked to build the McGill station in an open-air fashion for two years; during that time, they reinforced parts of the tunnel — rebuilding roughly 100 metres in the southern portion near Cathcart St., and reinforcing another 300 metres to the north of McGill station.

"It's a bit like when you buy an old house: it's not until you open up the walls that you find out the real condition of the house," Pelletier said.

They also redid the drainage, and added two huge ventilation shafts. They built a 5.5-kilometre wall to separate both tracks, and enlarged the tunnel for both the McGill and Édouard-Montpetit stations.

"Everything you see around you is all REM," Pelletier said while standing on the track near the doors for the McGill station. "The biggest technical challenges of the project are behind us now."

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Much of the work was done by remote-controlled drilling robots, which needed to be called in any time a hole had to be drilled into the tunnel's concrete. Even brackets used to hold wiring were installed by robots. That's because an explosion of century-old dynamite in the tunnel in the first months of the project caused the worksite to pause for three months, and for new safety procedures to be implemented.

Pelletier said the work in the tunnel is about 82 per cent complete. What's left is the logistical puzzle of wiring 600 kilometres of electrical, telecommunications and other cables, as well as the cables that will supply the electrical current to the trains. A cellular phone network is also being installed within the tunnel.

Forgues explained that every day, about 90 workers begin at the logistical centre just north of the Ville-de-Mont-Royal station. The workers and their equipment are loaded on work trains that enter the tunnel through the Canora station. Workers spend their whole shift on board and most are not even permitted to walk within the tunnel, so they have to use the trains to get where they need to go. The minute-to-minute positioning of the five work trains and their crews is planned by the logistics team, which counts as many as 75 people, always working one week in advance.

The trains have everything the crews need, including not just their equipment, but bathrooms and break rooms where they have access to microwaves and refrigerators. Crews spending their day in such a confined space brings added challenges.

"If you just look at the dimensions that the train takes up compared with the width of the tunnel, we have about a half an inch on either side along a good portion of the tunnel," said Patrick Bouchard, who is responsible for logistics on site.

Trouble in one spot in the tunnel can affect all the crews and their trains, because working to swap out equipment during a breakage can take from two to five hours.

Forgues said it's the most complicated project he's ever worked on, but one he's proud to be associated with.

"Because we're building something for the future, something for our children," he said.

jmagder@postmedia.com

twitter.com/jasonmagder

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