Part of a massive boring machine was pulled from beneath Toronto streets Monday morning, signaling the start of a new phase of construction of the Eglinton-Crosstown light rail project.

Now work begins building stations and putting rail tracks into the newly-carved underground pathways.

The $5.3-billion LRT project, one of the largest construction works in the province’s history, was initially set to be ready by late 2020, but the date has been pushed back to 2021.

Anne Marie Aikins, a spokesperson for the Metrolinx transit authority, said Monday that work is on track to meet that deadline.

After a decade of construction, the new line along Eglinton Ave. is expected to have 25 stations that will link to dozens of bus routes, several subway stations and GO Transit.

To start pulling a piece of the tunnel machine above ground, traffic briefly came to a halt on Eglinton Ave. near Yonge St. A circular hunk of the 10-metre long, 6.5-metre wide, 400-tonne digging behemoth was then lifted out by a large crane.

The piece belonged to a machine called “Don,” one of four tunnelling devices that have been burrowing below the city streets on the project.

Last August, “Don” finished its 3.3-km stint digging the north LRT tunnel, after starting from Brentcliffe Road in September 2015.

A Metrolinx spokesperson said the tunnels were finished earlier than expected, so it decided to leave the machines underground until a convenient time to take them out arrived. (It said there were no costs associated with waiting to do this.)

Aikins said beyond being a “spectacle” to witness, the extraction of the tunneling machines is a visual reminder that the project is making progress.

“We know the community has been through a lot and they are continuing to go through a lot,” said Aikins. “This neighbourhood, they’re impacted. You can’t build the largest transit project in the country, one of the largest in North America, without it being disruptive. We know that.”

Aikins said work on building 15 underground stations is already underway.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

John Brown, who was responsible for leading the project’s tunneling work, said the job was pretty standard for a tunneling project, but that the site’s placement in the middle of a city made things more challenging.

“It’s more the location. The feat, itself, is probably done a lot in mining operations where no one is around,” Brown said. “It’s the urban aspect. We’re pretty much at the junction at Yonge and Eglinton, so that’s the part that makes it a little more interesting and a little bit more of a feat.”

He said the tunnel portion of the project was challenging, but had been “very successful.”

On Monday night, the piece of “Don” that was removed will be sent to storage. The remaining tunnel boring machines, “Humber” and “Lea” and “Dennis,” are expected to be lifted out of the ground in the coming months.

Read more about: