Farewell to Endless Construction: China Moves a Bridge in Just 24 Hours, Pushing It Like a Giant LEGO Block

China is renowned for its effectiveness and efficiency when it comes to infrastructure: from erecting gigantic bridges in record time to moving buildings in just 20 days with the help of robots. The latest example has just been written in Guangyuan: they removed an old railway bridge and installed a new one, weighing 2,500 tonnes, in a mere 24 hours.

All this to be able to continue expanding the road passing underneath, which had grown too narrow, causing the train line to be interrupted for the shortest possible time. It is a major goods corridor, vital for coal transport, connecting several of Sichuan province’s main cities.

Surgical Engineering and Express Execution

The traffic on this Guangyuan urban road has grown significantly in recent years, both private cars as well as trucks and freight vehicles. It is an artery linking the city’s urban areas with other peripheral cities, such as Bazhong and Dazhou. This translates into daily traffic jams and delays in transport.

The solution, then, was to widen it: from two to four lanes. The problem was that this important road ran, at one point, under an essential railway line, itself an artery for trains. The engineers and the construction workers hit upon the solution: remove the old bridge and install the new, wider one, with hardly any impact on the train flow. They did it in a single day.

Pushing bridges, old and new. Essentially they designed a prefabricated bridge beside the old concrete bridge that supported the tracks, integrating the rail ties on its upper surface. Even as is, a major feat: this mass measures 10 meters long, 29 meters wide and 9.2 meters high, weighing 2,500 tonnes. A size equivalent to more than 1,600 cars stacked.