{"id":401172,"date":"2026-08-08T12:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/401172\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:56:07","slug":"the-dolores-dispatch-gettin-bored-on-mcneil-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/401172\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dolores Dispatch: Gettin’ Bored on McNeil Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Howdy, Austin! My name’s Dolores and I’m a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), but don’t you dare call me boring! Despite the name, tunnel boring is very exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s me, fully assembled at the Southland Contracting factory a few months ago with some of my team members. I like these folks, but I wish they would get out of the way so you could see how good I am at digging.<\/p>\n

I’m about to help Austin out big time by digging a giant hole underground through part of your city for a major project called the McNeil Transmission Main.<\/a> My work will give my construction buddies enough space to double the size<\/a> of the water pipe under McNeil Drive with a tunnel about 1.6 miles long at a depth of 52 feet. That\u2019s a lot of dirt and rock to get out of the way, but it’s fine with me. Tunnel boring is what I was made to do, I’m really good at it, and it\u2019s honestly hard for me to think about anything else.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another view of me with the McNeil project team. That crane in the background is about to put me in the ground so I can start \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 digging a giant hole.<\/p>\n

But the first step to letting me dig is getting me underground, and that\u2019s harder than it sounds when you\u2019re 160 feet long and weigh 100,000 pounds, give or take. Have you ever been lifted by a crane? Here\u2019s what that looked like for me last month, as I arrived on a flatbed truck at the McNeil project site.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/p>\n

They put these stickers on me so everyone would know my name. I don\u2019t know what the other stuff means.<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/p>\n

Everyone was excited to see me, which makes sense because I\u2019m very important. Aren\u2019t my red cutter discs just about the prettiest thing you\u2019ve ever seen? This would be a great time to break a champagne bottle over me, because I\u2019m never going to look shinier than this.<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the shaft they dug to make enough room to lower me down to where I need to start drilling. They did a good job, but I think I can do better \u2014 TBMs are competitive by nature.<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/p>\n

They\u2019re hooking me up to the crane! The anticipation is killing me! Aaaaaaaghhhhh!<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/p>\n

Look out below!<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/p>\n

One step closer to that sweet, sweet rock! These guys are really good at their jobs, but they can\u2019t dig as fast as me because they have hands instead of discs.<\/p>\n

In these photos, the workers are lowering my cutter head, which is certainly my best angle, as the first step to getting me fully assembled underground so I can get my bore on. Anyway, that’s enough photos of me, let’s call it a day for now \u2014 next time, we\u2019ll dig into more details about how I work and what I\u2019ll be doing down here. Have a boring day, folks!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Want to learn more about the McNeil Transmission Main project? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howdy, Austin! My name’s Dolores and I’m a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), but don’t you dare call me…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-401172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}