Now that the last two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) have been largely taken out of the Earth at the Crosstown light rail transit sites, we’re getting up close and personal with the heroes of the deep.

This is the innards of the beast.

After being interned underground, large sections of the last two huge tunnel boring machines (TBM) were recently brought back to the surface of Toronto. The pair – along with two sister digging machines – performed the majority of heavy tunnelling work along the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit (LRT) route.

Rusted and worn, they’re looking a little less formidable than when the city watched as they were first lowered into the subterranean workplace with great fanfare.

But in this latest image, of one of those TBMs with the head removed, we get a rare view inside its remarkable workings.

The tunnelling on the Eglinton Crosstown was completed in 2016 by all four tunnel boring machines. Two of them were dismantled and pulled out of the ground in 2017, but the last two have been waiting quietly for four years while construction has gone on all around them.

They were largely raised up earlier in March.

About 81-metres-long and weighing 511,000 kg., we finally get to see what they were made of.

For more images, just go here.