In the early summer season, dozens of meters underground in Guangzhou, Guangdong, machines roar inside the Xi'lang Tunnel of the Guangnan Connecting Line, where the giant shield machines "Tianyou" and "Juancheng" advance continuously 24 hours a day; on the Hangzhou Bay Sea-Crossing Bridge, a key and difficult control project of the Nantong-Ningbo Railway, large mechanized equipment such as piling vessels and transport-erection vessels work in coordination... Since the start of the year, from the water towns south of the Yangtze to the mountains of Yunnan and Guizhou, from the Hexi Corridor to the Bashu region, machines rumble and voices buzz on the crisscrossing railway construction sites, unfolding a scroll of striving.

China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "China Railway") released the latest data on May 13: from January to April this year, national railway fixed asset investment reached 200.8 billion yuan, up 3.2% year on year, injecting new momentum into regional economic and social development.

In the first four months of this year, a number of key projects made positive progress. Joint commissioning and testing proceeded smoothly on the Xi'an-Shiyan high-speed railway and the Shandong section of the Xiong'an-Shangqiu high-speed railway, with a maximum test speed of 385 km/h; static acceptance began on the Xi'an-Ankang high-speed railway, all tunnels on the Chongqing-Wanzhou high-speed railway were holed through, and a batch of key control projects, including the newly built Chongqing Science City Station on the Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line high-speed railway, advanced smoothly...

"China Railway focuses on serving major national strategies and regional economic and social development, leverages the advantages of the railway construction industry chain's length and wide reach, makes good use of the national 'two major' support policies, and accelerates railway construction," said a relevant official of the Construction Department of China Railway. Across the country, railway projects under construction are blossoming at multiple points and advancing in an orderly manner.

In Henan, construction of the Qinhe Grand Bridge, a control project of the Jiaozuo-Pingdingshan Railway, is advancing smoothly. The longest pile foundation of the Qinhe Grand Bridge reaches a depth of 108 meters, placing high demands on quality control of underwater concrete pouring and posing great construction difficulties.

In Zhejiang, construction has fully started on the continuous girder of the Qujiang Grand Bridge on the Quzhou-Lishui Railway that crosses the Liyang-Ningde Expressway. With a total length of 10.59 kilometers, the Qujiang Grand Bridge is the longest bridge and a control project of the Quzhou-Songyang section of the Quzhou-Lishui Railway, crossing existing lines such as the Liyang-Ningde Expressway, the Shanghai-Kunming Railway and the Hangzhou-Changsha Railway, as well as the Qujiang navigation channel.

In Guangxi, pile foundation work on the Sanbei Expressway Grand Bridge of the Hefei-Zhanjiang high-speed railway has passed the halfway mark, laying a solid foundation for subsequent construction of pile caps, pier shafts and girder erection. The Sanbei Expressway Grand Bridge crosses National Highway G209 and the Sanbei Expressway in succession and is a key and difficult project along the entire line.

Breakthroughs in high-risk, highly difficult control projects highlight the continuous progress of China's railway construction in technical equipment and construction organization.

In the mountains of southern Jiangxi, the Yunling Tunnel, a key and difficult project of the Changsha-Ganzhou high-speed railway, has a maximum burial depth of more than 524 meters and passes through 5 fault zones and 3 lithologic contact zones, with construction facing multiple risks such as high ground temperature, gas enrichment and dangerous rockfalls. To overcome these construction difficulties, the construction team deployed 9 pieces of fully mechanized equipment for all processes, achieving precise linkage and efficient operation of excavation, support and lining through key steps such as automatic drilling tracking and automatic anchor bolt grabbing, while innovatively applying an intelligent construction platform to generate traceable and analyzable real-time operation data, greatly improving construction efficiency and the level of intelligent safety assurance.

At the mouth of the Yangtze River, at the construction site of the Chongtai Yangtze River Tunnel on the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway along the Yangtze, engineers are using major national equipment to meet the challenge of crossing the Yangtze. To ensure that high-speed trains cross the river at 350 km/h, the project team equipped the tunnel shield machine "Linghang" with the most powerful brain system to achieve self-cruising of the tunneling attitude, and configured key equipment such as a high-water-pressure sealing system, enabling "Linghang" to set a record of 11,182 meters of continuous tunneling in a single run and complete an "ultra-long run" beneath the riverbed.

A relevant official of the Construction Department of China Railway said that China Railway will actively advance the various key railway projects set out in the 15th Five-Year Plan, accelerate the building of a world-class modern railway network, and provide strong support for promoting China's high-quality economic and social development.

Source: Science and Technology Daily