Building a new railway in a densely populated city like Tokyo or Yokohama is no easy task. The site of a disused freight terminal in Akihabara (central Tokyo) is being used to build the terminus for the Tsukuba Express Line to serve Tokyo’s north-eastern suburbs (top left, with artist’s impression of completed terminal). Advanced tunnel-boring machines are used to construct subway tunnels through weak ground under built-up areas. A huge underground depot was built under a former dockland to install a tunnel-boring machine for Yokohama Minatomirai Railway’s Minatomirai 21 Line (top right). An unusually large tunnel-boring machine with three bits was used to build an underground station with island platform for Tokyo’s Teito Rapid Transit Authority (TRTA) Hanzomon Line (bottom left and right).