Yorkie beat Torkie, but only by a day. After 945 meters of digging southward, the first 6.4-m-dia tunnel-boring machine broke through the headwall of the extraction shaft at what will be Black Creek Pioneer Village Station on June 13. The next day, its twin TBM, nicknamed Torkie, followed. The earth-pressure-balance TBMs did not match the unusual feat of Nov. 12, when they completed—almost simultaneously—1.7 kilometers south from theBlack Creek shaft to a future Finch West Station site. 

The June breakthroughs—which were tweeted by the proud “parents” at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) at every stage of progress—mark the next-to-last leg of 6.7 km of twin tunneling for the $2.6-billion project. After this, Torkie and Yorkie will head north, enter a launch shaft at the Highway 407 site and dig the final 1.3 km to the northern end of the new line, which will link the city of Toronto with the municipality of York.