Photos by Shi Jiamin

The new Fuzhou-Xiamen High-speed Railway Xixi swivel bridge, built by the China Railway Fourth Bureau, crossing the Hangzhou-Shenzhen railway rotated successfully on Thursday. This is the rotation engineering project of a continuous beam bridge with the longest span and heaviest of its kind in China.

The Hangzhou-Shenzhen Railway is one of the busiest trunk lines in China’s railway system, with an average of one train passing every five minutes. It’s difficult and risky to construct the newly-built piers 68 and 69 of Xixi bridge directly above the railway. So, the China Railway Fourth Bureau used the state-of-the-art bridge-rotating technique in China, that initially did the construction at open areas on both sides of the railway, and then rotated the bridge to cross the railway after the superstructure of the bridge was completed.

The successful rotation of the bridge opens a beam construction channel heading to Fuzhou, which is the foundation to open the Fuzhou-Xiamen Railyway in 2020, said Chen Liang, manager of the 8th bid project of the Fuzhou-Xiamen Railyway of the China RailwayFourth Bureau.

The newly built Fuzhou-Xiamen High-Speed Railway is China’s major Belt and Road engineering project, and also China’s first cross-sea high-speed railway. The railway starts from Fuzhou in Southeast China’s Fujian Province in the north, passes Putian, Quanzhou, and reaches Xiamen and Zhangzhou in the south, spanning 277.42 kilometers and reaching a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

After the completion of the Fuzhou-Xiamen Railway, the travel time between Fuzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou will be shortened, which will promote the rapid development of the agglomeration of city clusters within the region.

(Compiled by Chen Xinan)