At 17:58 on December 21, 2017, the Lijiawan Extra-Large Bridge over the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Line on the Mengxi-Huazhong Railway—the first minimum-curve pier-top rotational bridge over the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Railway, constructed by CCCC Road & Bridge Construction Co., Ltd.—began rotating above the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Railway and, after 30 minutes, precisely docked with the construction alignment. This marks the smooth achievement of another major milestone target for the Hubei Command of the Mengxi-Huazhong Railway.
The Lijiawan Extra-Large Bridge over the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Line has a total length of 1,224.23 meters, of which the rotational continuous girder is 177.5 meters long; the single-side rotational girder weighs 3,800 tons. Pier 28 rotated counterclockwise to 36°, and Pier 29 rotated counterclockwise to 30°. The minimum clearance between the girder body and the return line of the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Railway is only 4.6 meters. To ensure the operational safety of the existing line, the bridge adopted horizontal rotation construction: the rotational bridge was first cantilever-cast parallel to the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Railway, and then the preset rotation system was used to perform a horizontal rotation, crossing over the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Railway and docking with the design direction of the Mengxi-Huazhong line.
The Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Railway runs parallel to the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway and is the second important railway trunk line running north-south through China, with about 80 trains per day in each direction; during peak traffic periods, a train passes every 2-5 minutes. This posed great challenges to both the bridge construction and the rotation operation. To ensure that the rotation process was foolproof, before the rotation construction, project management personnel carried out precise calculations of the traction force, safety factor, and rotation time of the rotational structure by "weighing" the girder body and conducting a 5-degree trial rotation in advance, providing a "double insurance" for the successful rotation.
It is reported that after the Mengxi-Huazhong Railway is completed and opened to traffic, it will build a new railway corridor for China's "north-to-south coal transport," develop coal resources in the Inner Mongolia-Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region, guarantee energy supply for central China regions such as Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi, and promote economic and social development along the line.