Learn more about Virginie, the Eole line’s tunnel borer
Eole used a cutting-edge tunnel borer named “Virginie” to excavate an 8-kilometre passage between RER E’s Haussmann Saint-Lazare station and the line’s new terminus at Nanterre-La Folie station. We look back at this colossal undertaking, which marks the completion of phase 1 of the E line’s westward expansion.
It took 3 years to dig the 8-kilometre tunnel between Paris Saint-Lazare station and Nanterre-La Folie north-west of Paris, with Virginie reaching Nanterre on 15 February 2022. A milestone that marked the completion of phase 1 of the RER E line’s onward extension to the town of Mantes-La-Jolie. But it was also a colossal technical challenge for the 2,500-tonne machine and teams at SNCF Réseau, which is managing the Eole project.
Virginie the tunnel borer: nothing is wasted, everything is transformed
Tunnel excavation and lining
At 90 metres long with a cutterhead 11 metres in diameter, Virginie (christened in 2018) is the largest tunnel boring machine ever used in France for a rail tunnel. The whole apparatus is a veritable factory on wheels that excavates earth, removes debris and stabilizes tunnel walls, installing prefab concrete liners to permanently support the entire structure. Built in Germany by Herrenknecht, the world’s leading maker of boring machines, Virginie was perfectly suited to digging through the geological formations along the tunnel’s route.
2,500 T
weight of Virginie the tunnel borer
10-15 metres
excavated each day
11m
diameter of the cutterhead
Virginie—charting a course
Virginie’s journey began in 2019 in the town of Courbevoie, northwest of Paris. Works passed beneath the Seine river in November that year, and arrived at Porte Maillot on the western edge of Paris in September 2020. Once maintenance and lateral shield steering1 in the underground portion of this area were complete, Virginie resumed its odyssey, heading towards Haussmann Saint-Lazare station in June 2021. With its work done, the machine will be taken apart and recycled.
Eole, a vital link in the Paris region’s transport network
The Paris region’s rail network is France’s most heavily used, carrying 3.2 million passengers a day—and packing 70% of the nation’s daily ridership into 10% of its total rail infrastructure. By extending the RER E line 55 kilometres westward, Eole (short for Est-Ouest Liaison Express) will ease pressure on this intensely used system.
The new RER E line will ultimately have two corridors:
- Eastern branch: from Nanterre station to Chelles and Tournan to the east
- Western branch: from Rosa Parks station to Mantes-La-Jolie in the west.
Eole will serve 650,000 passengers daily, on top of the 2 million Paris region residents who use the RER network’s other major lines, the Paris metro, and the Transilien rail network.