en.Wedoany.com Reported - Italian contractor Webuild has achieved two tunnel milestones on the Sicily railway expansion project.

The group said the tunnel boring machine (TBM) "Letteria" has completed excavation of the first tube of the Scaletta tunnel near Giampilieri, while its sister machine "Alessia" has started boring operations in Letojanni. Webuild is building a 28-kilometer double-track railway between two coastal towns in Sicily, part of a plan to reduce travel time between Messina and Catania. The railway is part of the Scandinavian–Mediterranean Corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network, traversing a complex area where infrastructure is often located underground. Geological constraints along the coastal section have long affected local transport. Webuild said cutting the travel time between Messina and Catania by half an hour to just 45 minutes would boost tourism and reduce the isolation of the production network.

The TBM "Letteria," 135 meters long with a cutterhead diameter of over 9 meters, has completed excavation of one of two parallel tunnels. Each of the two parallel tunnels, 2.7 kilometers long, will form the Scaletta tunnel. Several kilometers away, after completing the 2.5-kilometer Forza d’Agrò tunnel, the TBM "Alessia" was dismantled, transported along a 90-meter-long viaduct over the Fondaco Parrino stream, and reassembled, ready to begin excavating the 3.8-kilometer Letojanni tunnel. Above-ground works at the site will include the Letojanni viaduct, consisting of two parallel bridges, 225 meters and 245 meters long respectively.

Webuild is involved in six lots of the broader Palermo-Catania-Messina upgrade programme. The contractor has 21 projects underway in southern Italy, including four sections of the Naples-Bari railway in the Campania region; two phases of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria line; and several projects aimed at strengthening urban and suburban transport in Naples, as well as a functional upgrade of the city's East Wastewater Treatment Plant. Last month, Webuild completed tunnel excavation for a new railway junction near Novi Ligure in northwestern Italy.

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