China to Build High-Speed Rail to
Singapore, via Laos
Chinese Engineers Build 17,000-Ton
Flyover Section at 90 Degrees
Now Thats’s a swing bridge!
The fastest train in China to date
China is giving a steely
infrastructural hug to its southeast
Asian neighbours, with plans to
roll out a massive high-speed rail
system to crisscross Laos, Thailand,
and Malaysia en route to Singapore.
Laos, which currently boasts a
humble two miles of functioning
railway track, is in for a bit of a
shock.
The Lao government, the cuddly
Lao People’s Revolutionary Party,
met with Li Keqiang last year and
welcomed the plan with open arms.
As The Telegraph reports, Laos
could be potentially transformed or
crippled by the deal.
Constructing it will be a mammoth
engineering task. It will require 154
bridges and 76 tunnels, as well as
31 train stations, just to get the line
the 260 miles from Boten on the
Laos-China border to Laos’ capital
Vientiane.
An estimated 20,000 Chinese
workers will be needed to build it,
with the completion date set for
2019.
Using untapped minerals as
collateral, Laos plans to borrow
£4.5 billion from Beijing to pay for
its section of the railway. Equivalent
to almost 90 per cent of Laos’s
annual GDP of £5.2 billion, the loan
will instantly make Laos the world’s
fourth most-indebted nation after
Japan, Zimbabwe and Greece.
Many international financial bodies
regard the loan as a disaster waiting
to happen. The Asian Development
Bank has described it simply as
“unaffordable”.
Just servicing the yearly interest
on the loan will amount to almost
20% of Laos’s annual government
spending. In short, the Chinese
government will essentially own Laos
after the check clears, but with a
national product of about 8.5 billion
USD, there are several individual
Chinese billionaires who could
purchase the country in full anyways.
The main railways are aimed
for completion by 2019, with
expansions planned into Burma/
Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia
in the years to come.
It was the first time the
innovative technique had been
used in China.
Chinese engineers build
17,000-ton flyover section at
90 degrees so railway below
could remain open then rotate
it into place Engineers took 90
minutes to swivel the structure
into place in Wuhan City on
17 January 2014. The section
was built separately so as not
to disturb the busy high speed
railway track beneath it.
The country has the world’s
longest high speed rail network
with over 6,200 miles of routes
in service in December 2012.
It was the first time the unusual
construction technique was
used in the country.
China is home to the largest
high speed rail network in the
world.
Forward-thinking engineers in
China are the first in the country
to have built a section of an
enormous overpass and rotate
it into place upon completion
so as not to disturb the railways
below.
A 17,000 ton part of an elevated
motorway was today slowly
swung into place in Wuhan
City after being constructed
independently beside a high
speed railway track.
The track beneath the bridge
in Wuhan City was considered
too important to be temporarily
halted in order for engineers’ to
complete construction.
Once finished, the overpass
will be 256m long and span 11
railways, including the 1,428
mile-long Beijing-Guangzhou
service.
Experts estimate the bridge will
be open to traffic later in the
month of January 2014 before
Lunar New Year..
A similar technique was used
to construct the Grade I listed
Kingsgate Bridge across the
River Wear in Durham in 1968.
Designed in 1963 by Sir Ove
Arup, the bridge’s two halves
were built on the river’s bank
and swung together at 90
degrees.
Experts took 90 minutes to
connect the section to the rest
of the bridge, tuning it 106
degrees on a 15metre high axis.
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