As one of the key projects of the Shenzhen-Maoming Railway — the Taicheng River Grand Bridge — after a year of construction, all pier works have now been completed. The main bridge is about to enter the connection construction stage and is expected to achieve closure before August this year.

Recently, rainfall has been frequent, but this has not affected the work of the construction team of the Taicheng River Grand Bridge on the Shenzhen-Maoming Railway. In recent days, construction workers have been carrying out rebar tying, welding and other work on the high bridge deck, gradually shortening the distance between the two large T-shaped cantilever beams.

The Taicheng River Grand Bridge of the Shenzhen-Maoming Railway is located in the lower reaches of the Taicheng River, with a total length of 1,941.6 meters. The bridge is situated in a low-lying area of the Tanjiang River basin, where the geology is poor and the pipe pile embedment depth is large. The river flow is greatly affected by seasonal rainfall, typhoons and ocean tides, resulting in high safety risks. It is one of the key and control projects of the entire line.

Since the bridge project officially started construction in early last year, the engineering team under the China Railway 20th Bureau Group has carefully organized a bridge operation team with rich experience in water operations, overcoming multiple difficulties such as the complex geology of the main pier bore piles and the great difficulty of steel sheet pile cofferdam construction, effectively ensuring the schedule requirements of construction milestones. Over the past year, the pouring of 480 pile foundations was successfully completed. At the beginning of this year, the tower crane installation for the bridge was successfully completed, and subsequently, the construction of the main piers and cantilever beams also entered the final critical stage.

At present, the main piers of the bridge have been fully completed, and the main structure of the two large T-shaped cantilever beams has also been completed. The construction unit stated that the key point of the project now lies in the closure work of the main pier cantilever beams, including the closure of the cantilever beams in the middle of the river and the connection between the cantilever beams and the onshore piers. This work requires high engineering precision and small errors. Therefore, the construction unit has appropriately arranged a construction method of tying rebar during the day and pouring cement at night, so that the main pier cantilever beams extend bit by bit to both sides, ensuring the best quality of the project. According to the current progress, closure is expected to be completed before August.