HSR bolstered to aid socioeconomic progress

Amid the country's push to expand the operating mileage of railways, Chinese railway operator China Railway promised to optimize the supply of passenger and freight services, strengthening the backbone role of railways in the comprehensive transport system.

China Railway aims to expand the operating mileage of railways from the current 165,000 kilometers to 180,000 km by the end of 2030, providing strong support for bolstering the modernization drive. Among them, high-speed railways will be increased from the current 50,000 km to 60,000 km by end-2030.

The operator announced on July 30 that in the first half of this year, Chinese railways handled a total freight volume of 2.015 billion metric tons, up 1.8 percent year-on-year, with railway freight transport working to build benchmark demonstration services for passenger-train-style express freight trains.

On July 21, Wang Qiming, deputy director of the National Railway Administration, said that in the first half of this year, railway fixed assets investment remained high, with a cumulative figure hitting 363.2 billion yuan ($53.79 billion), up 2.1 percent year-on-year, and playing an important role in expanding domestic demand and stabilizing growth.

Constructors from State builder China Railway No 4 Engineering Group (CREC4) noted that currently, Chinese builders are pushing for intelligence, standardization, industrialization and streamlined process for building HSR to help bolster the national drive.

On July 30, CREC4 constructors rotated a 145.5-meter beam, weighing 10,000 metric tons, of the Super Bridge Traversing Shanghai-Kunming HSR on the 96-km Shaoyang-Yongzhou HSR in Hunan province.

Zhao Yanlong, a CREC4 superintendent for the project, said the Shaoyang-Yongzhou HSR, which began its construction on Dec 26, 2023, is part of the 2,300-km Hohhot-Nanning HSR and a key part of China's HSR network with eight HSR running vertically and eight HSR running horizontally.

The super bridge spanning the Shanghai-Kunming HSR has a total length of 4,051.58 meters, making it the longest and highest pier-bridge on the entire Shaoyang-Yongzhou HSR, he said.

The rotated beam — sitting on the 49th pier — has a T-shaped structure, and was horizontally rotated counterclockwise at an angle of 26 degrees to its designed position.

Zhao stressed that innovations have made railway building faster in China, helping realize a leapfrog upgrade in railway's intelligent construction and enhance work safety.

Citing construction of the Shaoyang-Yongzhou HSR, Zhao said their beam yard, construction plant, prefabrication plant, and steel processing plant all helped accelerate the construction process.

In traversing the No 207 national highway, they also used a smart bridge-building machine to conduct the HSR construction, so as not to interfere with the highway traffic at all, he said.

"More and more intelligent and smart tools are being utilized by Chinese railway builders in modern railway construction, to serve as a witness to the upgrade of the national infrastructure," Zhao said. "They are building steel 'dragons' on the Chinese soil, making cities closely connected and the countryside rejuvenated, helping solidify the country's social and economic progress."

Zhao's colleague Song Ming added that the Shaoyang-Yongzhou HSR can allow trains to run at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour, and CREC4 is building 34.233 km — the No 1 bid — of it.

Song noted that to ensure the successful rotation of the beam, CREC4 optimized the construction plan and cement-pouring process, strictly controlling the construction standard.

Furthermore, real-time data monitoring was also used to accurately control the engineering quality of the rotated beam, Song said.

Han Xinliang contributed to this story.

hanjingyan@chinadaily.com.cn