Covered excavation methods with and without side piles of shallowburied section of Shilin tunnel and Laoxiao No. 1 tunnel on YunanGuilin railway are presented. Key construction technologies of covered excavation method of large crosssection and shallowburied tunnel are summarized. Applicable conditions of covered excavation method are discussed, and the conditions that mining method can be replaced by covered excavation methods are proposed The mentioned conditions includes: coverspan ratio at normal strata is 0.4 ~ 0.6, and coverspan ratio at karst strata is 0.6 ~ 1.0. 