The reporter learned from the Railway Construction Office of the Provincial Development and Reform Commission that the main line track of the Anhui section of the Anjiu High-Speed Railway has been laid. At the same time, the Bianyu Zhou Yangtze River Bridge, a controlling project of the Anjiu High-Speed Railway, is expected to complete closure in July this year.

Recently, at the track-laying site of the Anjiu project within Anqing, the ballastless track-laying unit smoothly placed the last pair of rails into the rail bearing grooves, marking the completion of main line track laying in the Anhui section of the Anjiu High-Speed Railway. According to the construction plan, rail welding for the entire line will be completed in April to achieve continuous welded rail, and it is expected to enter the joint commissioning and testing stage in June and open to traffic by the end of the year.

The Anjiu High-Speed Railway connects Anqing City in Anhui Province with Jiujiang City in Jiangxi Province. The line has a total of 7 stations: Anqing West Station, Qianshan South Station, Taihu South Station, Susong East Station, Huangmei East Station, Konglong North Station, and Lushan Station. It is an important part of the Beijing-Hong Kong (Taiwan) Corridor, a major high-speed railway corridor in the national medium- and long-term railway network plan's “Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal” network, with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

At present, the Jiangxi section of the Anjiu High-Speed Railway has fully resumed work. After the Anjiu High-Speed Railway opens, it will connect with the He'an High-Speed Railway, which opened in December last year. In 2021, the Anhui Provincial Government Work Report explicitly proposed that the Anqing~Jiujiang High-Speed Railway should be completed this year, and construction should begin on the Wuhan~Hefei~Nanjing section of the riverside high-speed railway.

The Bianyu Zhou Yangtze River Bridge, located at the junction of Chaisang District in Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province, and Huangmei County in Huanggang City, Hubei Province, is a controlling project of the Anjiu High-Speed Railway and China's first cross-cable hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge designed for a speed of 350 kilometers per hour. The investment is 2.925 billion yuan.

The reporter learned from Hubei and Jiangxi that construction of the Yangtze River bridge started on November 15, 2017, and the first main tower was successfully capped on December 30, 2020. At present, the main navigation channel cable-stayed bridge is sprinting toward closure; the cantilevers on both sides have extended more than 400 meters, with a gap of more than 200 meters remaining. Another smaller cable-stayed bridge still needs several dozen meters to close.

“Work will not stop during the Spring Festival. More than a thousand builders from Henan, Gansu, Shanxi, Hubei, and other places are working together on the site, striving to complete the bridge as soon as possible,” said the person in charge of the construction unit. The bridge is expected to achieve main bridge closure in July, and the entire bridge is expected to be completed and open to traffic by the end of the year.

Once the Bianyu Zhou Yangtze River Bridge is completed, it will mark that the construction of the Beijing-Kowloon High-Speed Railway has crossed the natural barrier of the Yangtze River, bringing Anhui and Jiangxi, and even the Pearl River Delta region, closer in time and space. It also means that the Beijing-Kowloon High-Speed Railway is getting closer to the goal of full-line connectivity.