 The first use of a roadheader in a civil engineering project was the construction of the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop in the 1970s, where the machines enabled around 80% of excavation to be performed mechanically.They are now used in a broad range of applications including but not limited to tunneling both for mining and municipal government projects, building wine caves, and building cave homes such as those found in the Coober Pedy area of Australia.On February 21, 2014, Waller Street, just south of Laurier Avenue collapsed into an 8m-wide and 12m-deep sink-hole where a roadheader was excavating the eastern entrance to Ottawa's LRT O-Train tunnel.