Brescia Est-Verona AV/AC section

On 18 December 2024, under the High Supervision and Works Management of Italferr, the excavation was completed - with breaking down of the diaphragm - of the San Giorgio in Salici Natural Tunnel located just south of the town of the same name in the municipality of Sona in the province of Verona, between the towns of Castelnuovo del Garda and Sommacampagna.

The work is part of the new Brescia Est-Verona AV/AC line, which crosses the regions of Lombardy and Veneto in the provinces of Brescia, Verona and Mantua and involves the construction of a railway line of approximately 48 km, including the 2.2 km of the "Verona Merci" interconnection connecting it to the Verona – Brenner railway axis.

The work has a total development of 1,427.39 m and was carried out with a blind hole, with excavation using the traditional hammer method; the excavation was characterised by a double-track single-barrel section with an excavation surface of approximately 156 m2; the coverage along the route varied from a minimum of 4 m to a maximum of 22 m.

The tunnel was excavated on two fronts, the Milan side and the Verona side, using typical consolidation and excavation sections of unstable fronts. The consolidations (jet-grouting, plastic piles and valved injections) were carried out both from inside the tunnel (truncated cone excavation section) and from ground level.

The most complex part of the work was the construction of the underpass of the A4 BS-VR motorway, as the low angle of incidence led to the development of the interfering section with a length of approximately 300 ml. in conditions of low coverage (from 5 to 7.5 m) compared to the motorway platform which, during the works, has always remained in operation.

The work will be completed by two artificial tunnels (on the Milan side and the Verona side) which will form a single tunnel, called the “San Giorgio in Salici System”, with an overall development of 3,393 meters.

During all the construction phases - which were developed in a continuous cycle with work on 3 daily shifts for 7 days/week - the Italferr Works Management team carried out the control of all the activities both in the field and in document management.

The event on the San Giorgio in Salici tunnel, which took place at the eastern entrance of the tunnel on the Verona side in Località Tagliaferro, saw the demolition of the diaphragm and the consequent joining of the two sections excavated respectively proceeding from the entrance on the Verona side and the entrance on the Milan side. The Italferr High Surveillance, the Eng. Daniele Scataglini (Northern Project Area Manager), Eng. Filomena Santelli (PM), Eng. Matteo Masenelli (DL Lombardia), Eng. Andrea Pauri (DL Veneto) and Eng. Luca La Penna (DL Tecnologie), the construction site inspectors Enrico Zerman and Ettore Ragusa.

The completion works of the work will continue in the coming months with the construction of the last segments of the final coating, the completion of the technological niches and the completion of the emergency exits, which will be followed by the installation of the railway superstructure and the construction of the technological works.

The work, financed with funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), represents one of the pieces of the Mediterranean Core Corridor that will connect the ports of the southern Iberian Peninsula with the Ukrainian border, passing through the south of France, Northern Italy and Slovenia, with a section in Croatia.

The completion of the line will reduce interference between different transport flows, making circulation more fluid and increasing traffic capacity at the railway hubs of Brescia and Verona, with benefits for the regularity and punctuality of both long-distance and regional services, as well as freight transport.