After having dug the 57 km of the South tunnel in 2016, this morning the TBM MACHINE  Federica has dropped  the last rock diaphragm, thus achieving a truly important milestone. It is in fact the first section of the tunnel that will see the passage of passenger trains and trains in the direction of France from 2030. 9 kilometers very difficult, says Stefano Festa, engineer and head of geology: «One of the elements of the difficulty was the scarce geological knowledge due also to the depth of the tunnel Difficulty due to layers of coal that have the characteristic of converging a lot and the risk is that the TBM  machine  remains trapped «. Florent Martin, construction site manager: «I have been managing the construction site since 2014, which still has some work ahead of it. We have 450 people who have worked for us for 3 years, we are stabilized around 270 people. We need everyone’s cooperation, the question in 2015 was whether we would reach the end or stop halfway. » In Italy the works, after the races, will start in 2021 and by 2021 all the works will start