Albvorland Tunnel

The Albvorland Tunnel is a 8,176 m long twin-tube railway tunnel on the Wendlingen–Ulm high-speed railway in Baden-Württemberg. It underpasses a part of the town Kirchheim-Lindorf and Bundesautobahn 8 at the junction of Kirchheim-East in the industrial area of Dettingen unter Teck The tunnel is situated between kilometer 26.077 and 34.253 on the railway line. It is on the boundary of Wendlingen am Neckar, Kirchheim unter Teck, Lindorf and Dettingen unter Teck. It also underpasses a high pressure gas line and a NATO fuel line.

Construction
The tunnel traverses under and through layers of black jura. The biggest superposition is 65 m, the smallest superposition is 9.5 m. High water pressure was expected. The tunnel is part of section 2.1a/b of the line.

The costs of €270 million were expected in a newspaper in April 2014, confirmed by the government. In April 2009, the rough costs were calculated at €16.5 million per kilometre. The total cost of section 2.1 will be €798.7 million (at 2010 prices).

The call for competition for the tunnel's construction had 8 bidders. The order was valued at €380 million and was awarded on 18. December 2015 to Swiss company, Implenia.

In a planning paper from Deutsche Bahn (March 2012), planning approval was expected for 2014, with the start of work expected in 2014 and end of work in 2021. In Spring 2014, the contractor delayed the plan approval to beginning of 2015 and the start to 2016.

Tunneling on the south tunnel began on November 9, 2017 with TBM Wanda and on the north tunnel in January 2018 with TBM Sibylle. The 10.82 m wide, 137m long, 2300 t Herrenknecht earth pressure balance TBMs completed tunnelling in October 29, 2019, after advancing an average of 15 m a day.

The Wendlingen-Ulm line was opened for passenger service on December 19, 2022. Alongside these parallel drives, some conventional construction with blasting and excavators was used at the western portal.

Tunnel
The twin tube tunnel has an additional short 520m freight line connection at its western portal, with a 170 m single track tunnel. A link to the Stuttgart-Tübingen line is also situated close to the western portal. There are cross-passages approximately every 475 m.

The tunnel uses slab track and has LED illuminated handrails throughout its length. The track is equipped with ETCS level 2 signalling as with the rest of the line, as well as hot axlebox and seized brake detectors fitted in the tunnels. The two tunnels are connected by 4.6 m wide cross-passages.