At 1:21 AM on January 31, Hankou Railway Station, just “escaping” from the hustle and bustle of traffic, was again engulfed in a roar of cheers. The 200-meter-long, 8,600-ton “one-sided heavy” rotating bridge of the Wuhan Second Ring to Third Ring Expressway, crossing Hankou Station, rotated 81 degrees clockwise under the push of two sliding trolleys, and at 3:04 AM, it precisely docked with the front and rear bridge segments. The entire rotation process took 103 minutes. With one end 91.4 meters long and the other 43.8 meters, and an eccentric weight of over 3,000 tons, China's first “one-sided heavy” rotating bridge was successfully installed in Hankou. Thousands of cadres and employees from Hankou Railway Station and the construction, design, supervision, and construction units on site took out their phones to record this historic moment.
　　The expressway from the Second Ring to the Third Ring in Wuhan needs to cross multiple arterial railway lines at Hankou Station, including the Beijing-Guangzhou, Hankou-Yichang, and Wuhan-Xiangyang lines, where traffic is heavy and the transportation network is dense. To ensure the safety of railway transportation and key traffic routes, a rotating bridge became the only choice. Due to the dense surrounding residential buildings and limited space, an asymmetric “one-sided heavy” steel box girder rotating bridge naturally emerged. The bridge is designed as a double-span double-width structure, 51 meters wide, with beam height varying according to a quadratic parabola, and cross-section height gradually increasing from 3 meters to 6.5 meters. The steel girder is composed of 236 steel plates welded and assembled, with high technical requirements and great construction difficulty. The welding of steel girders and the unbalanced “one-sided heavy” rotation construction have become key challenges.
　　After consultation between the Wuhan Railway Bureau and the construction design unit, Hanjiang Heavy Industry of China Railway 11th Bureau Group undertook the “one-stop” manufacturing and construction of the “one-sided heavy” rotating bridge. The company has previously innovatively developed and produced China's first JQ60 light rail bridge erection machine and YL60 beam transport vehicle with independent intellectual property rights, the first high-speed railway ballastless track concrete pouring machine, the first variant tunnel lining trolley, the first tunnel-specific gantry crane, the first 900-ton heavy-duty bridge transport vehicle and bridge erection machine, 900-ton beam lifting gantry crane, and other large modern construction equipment. It has both special equipment manufacturing qualifications and railway and highway bridge erection qualifications.
　　According to Yang Jiang, project manager of Hanjiang Heavy Industry's Wuhan Expressway project, in order to complete the bridge rotation project, Hanjiang Heavy Industry, after sufficient technical preparation and exploratory research, has successively overcome a series of technical difficulties such as the installation of the “fulcrum” and power system of large-tonnage rotating bridges, unbalanced control of asymmetric “one-sided heavy” bridges, and seamless welding of long and large steel box girders. In particular, the fully automatic submerged arc welding machine developed by the company played a major role in the welding of long and large steel box girders this time. The welds, totaling 13,648 meters in length, are tight and flawless, and have been highly praised by the owner and users.