It’s official. Elsie, Metro’s second tunnel boring machine for the first section of the Purple Line Extension, has made it to Wilshire/Western Station in Koreatown. The Goliath-sized TBM made it to the station at 3:57 p.m. on Thursday (June 27) — the tunnel at left in the above photo.

The breakthrough marks the completion of tunneling work for the first two-mile section of the project between Wilshire/La Brea and Wilshire/Western. The TBMs will now be dismantled and trucked back to Metro’s Wilshire/La Brea construction yard, where they will be reassembled and then begin digging the two miles toward the Wilshire Wilshire/Fairfax and then Wilshire/La Cienega stations. Both TBMs are scheduled to reach Wilshire/La Cienega in Beverly Hills by mid-2020.

The other TBM, named Soyeon, broke through on June 11. See our earlier blog post. Section 1 of the Purple Line Extension is now more than halfway complete and is scheduled to open in 2023. For more information on the project, please visit the Purple Line Extension homepage on metro.net.