Facts About Rosie the Tunnel Boring Machine

√ Rosie is the tunnel boring machine (TBM) that constructed Portland, Oregon's East Side Big Pipe.
 

√ Project officials named the tunnel boring machine Rosie because Portland is the City of Roses.

√ The firm Herrenknecht (heron-connect) manufactured Rosie in the city of Schwanau, Germany in 2006 at a cost of $12 million.

√ A cargo ship carried the TBM in sections from Germany to the Port of Vancouver in March 2007.

√ Portland’s East Side CSO Tunnel contractor, the join venture of Kiewit-Bilfinger Berger (KBB), assembled the TBM at the bottom of the project’s main mining shaft, the Opera Shaft.

√ The fully assembled TBM, including the supporting equipment it pulled behind, was 220 feet long and 25 feet in diameter.

√ The TBM itself weighed 530 tons, about the same as 26 TriMet buses; the 25-foot diameter cutterhead alone weighed 88 tons.

√ Rosie began mining toward Swan Island in June 2007.

√ Rosie entered the Port Center Way Shaft on Swan Island on October 30, 2009, completing the more than 4-mile long north drive.

√ KBB contracted with Emmert International to remove the TBM from the Port Center Way Shaft, barge it back up the Willamette River and return it to the Opera Shaft.

√ A 700-ton gantry crane hoisted the TBM out of the Port Center Way Shaft in two sections; the main section weighed 460 tons and the tail shield weighed 70 tons.

√ Emmert International loaded the TBM sections on self-propelled transport vehicles that moved them to a dry dock on the north end of Swan Island.

√ Both transport vehicles were loaded on a 300-foot barge for the trip upriver; the barge can haul a load of up to 4,800 tons.

√ Rosie was barged back to the Opera Shaft on Wednesday, December 16, 2009; the trip took about one hour.

√ Other large objects moved by barge on the Willamette River in Portland include Portlandia in October 1985 (38 feet high, 6.5 tons) and the HK-1 Flying Boat, aka the Spruce Goose, in October 1992 (79 feet high, 150 tons)

√ Rosie was refurbished, then reassembled in the Opera Shaft for the 8,800 feet south drive to the SE 17th and McLoughlin Shaft.

√ Rosie completed construction of the 6-mile long East Side CSO Tunnel in October 2010.

√ KBB scrapped Rosie's cutterhead and sent other TBM segments back to Herrenknecht in Germany.

√ When the East Side CSO Tunnel is activated in winter 2011, it will prevent more than two billion gallons of combined sewage from reaching the Willamette River every year.