A source within AEL, who declined to be named, confirmed to Finweek that the company was bidding for the blasting contract. "We are definitely bidding, but we're not alone," he said. "I think all the explosives suppliers will be bidding."

The main underground section of the rail link - which is where the bulk of the blasting and tunnelling will be done - extends 15km from Park Station in the Johannesburg CBD to Sandton Station, just off Rivonia Road.

According to the Gautrain call centre, only the roughly 6km stretch between the Sandton and Marlboro stations will need to be completed in time for the Fifa World Cup in 2010.

The tricky part though is that according to engineering sources, only about 10m of blasting and tunnelling will be completed per day - and that's assuming that the tunnelling is done from opposite directions.

A different source - who again declined to be named - said engineers would be lucky to tunnel more than 3m a day as "there's a lot of quartzite and granite in Gauteng, which is very hard".

Assuming that engineers can tunnel 10m a day, the stretch between Sandton and Marlboro should be completed in under two years. However, if they can tunnel only 3m/day, it will take them a full four years to complete just 4,4km of the tunnel.

A further complication is that every building along the route would have to be assessed before and after blasting and tunnelling commences to prevent fraudulent damages claims from building owners along the route. Removing the blasted rock from the tunnel will also become more difficult as the tunnel extends.

One of the difficulties with ascertaining whether any of the above claims are true, is the fact that none of the stakeholders are willing to talk on the matter.

Tim Wakefield, a Murray & Roberts engineer working on the project, was eventually tracked down in Germany but refused to comment on the issue and instead referred Finweek to the Bombela Consortium, which ironically is housed within Murray & Roberts's offices. Unfortunately, Bombela was equally non-committal, saying they could not talk about the project, as Bombela was technically still a preferred bidder. However, a source within Bombela did tell Finweek that it now seemed unlikely that any section of the project will be completed by 2010.