The left and right sides of the 220.3-meter Weifang Super Bridge, built by constructors from China Railway No 4 Engineering Group in parallel with the existing Qingdao-Jinan passenger and cargo transport lines in Shandong province, are rotated later to traverse the two railways, serving the Weifang-Suqian High-speed Railway. SHI JIAMIN/FOR CHINA DAILY

Amid the country's new drive to expand the operating mileage of railways, constructors from China Railway No 4 Engineering Group are making efforts to bolster construction of a second high-speed railway that can link Beijing and Shanghai.

The 399-kilometer-long Weifang-Suqian HSR, with an investment of some 76 billion yuan ($11.2 billion), can directly connect Weifang in Shandong province and Suqian in Jiangsu province, with 12 stations, including Weifang North, Anqiu, Zhucheng West, Wulian North, Juxian North, Yinan, Linyi North, Lanling and Suqian East, said Li Jinpeng, a CREC4 employee.

As part of the national "Eight Verticals and Eight Horizontals" HSR network, the Weifang-Suqian HSR can help facilitate local travel and support the high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin regions, he said.

At present, construction of the Shandong section — extending 324.8 km between Weifang North Station in the north and the Shandong-Jiangsu border with a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour for the trains — is in full progress, Li said.

In the early hours of July 29, the Weifang Super Bridge, which traverses the existing Qingdao-Jinan HSR, completed the successful rotation of its main span, with the left and right sections of the continuous beam being rotated simultaneously.

The continuous beam of the Weifang Super Bridge — owned by Xiong'an High-speed Railway — spans 220.3 meters, and is built in two sides, with each side extending for some 110 meters and weighing over 7,000 metric tons.

"The successful rotation marked a new breakthrough and laid a solid foundation for connecting the whole line," Li said.

The Weifang-Suqian HSR, which saw construction commence in December 2023, is scheduled to open to traffic by end-June 2028.

Early this year, during the Chinese railway operator's working conference, China Railway stated that it aimed to expand the operating mileage of railways from the current 165,000 km to 180,000 km by end-2030. As part of the effort, the country's HSR will be increased from the current 50,000 km to 60,000 km by end-2030.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, China Railway invested some 2 trillion yuan and put 15,000 km of new railway lines into operation in remote and poverty-stricken areas, helping 81 counties end their no-rail history.

Wu Yiyong, publicity chief of CREC4 First Engineering, which is building the Weifang Super Bridge, explained that the angle between the continuous beam body and the downward line of Qingdao-Jinan HSR is 99 degrees and 28 minutes, while the angle between the beam body and the upward line is 99 degrees and 26 minutes.

The construction team has adopted a method of "casting beam sections in parallel with the existing HSR, and rotating 80 degrees clockwise overall," he said.

Rotating at a constant speed of 1 degree per minute on average, the continuous beam achieved precise docking, Wu said.

"The use of rotation method minimized the impact on existing rail transport and effectively ensured the double safety of train operations and our construction work," Wu said.

Furthermore, an intelligent monitoring information platform was used for the rotation process, in a bid to ensure the precise docking, he said.

"With our intelligent equipment, the rotation process can be monitored and warned in real time, dynamically displaying the meteorological information (wind speed and direction), the rotation control parameters (angle and angular velocity), beam posture (elevation) and other indicators," Wu said.

Earlier, the entire rotation trajectory had been simulated, while possible collisions are predicted in advance for analysis and warning, providing data support for rotation command decision-making, he said.

China Railway said to better serve Chinese modernization, building a world-class railway enterprise in the country is vital.

Wu stressed that when the Weifang-Suqian HSR is put into full operation, it will further improve the transport network in the northern regions of Shandong and Jiangsu.