China builds railway arch bridge with world's longest span

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2018 shows the railway arch bridge across the Nujiang River in southwest China's Yunnan Province. With a grand arch bridge erected on Monday morning, Chinese constructors have built the longest-spanning railway arch bridge with a single span of 490 meters. The bridge is a key project of the 220-km-long Dali-Ruili railway which is a key section of the China-Myanmar international railway corridor linking Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, with Yangon of Myanmar. (Xinhua)

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- With a grand arch bridge erected on Monday morning across the Nujiang River in southwestern China's Yunnan Province, Chinese constructors have built the world's longest-spanning railway arch bridge.

The bridge measures 1,024 meters long and nearly 25 meters wide. With a single span of 490 meters, it can accommodate the parking of four trains at the same time, said Yu Changbin, a project manager with China Railway Construction Corporation.

"As the bridge is situated in the gorge of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and affected by a high-intensity seismic belt, it was much more demanding in both breadth and bearing capacity than ordinary railway bridges," Yu said. "There is no precedent for building such a huge bridge station."

To complete the bridge, constructors had to assemble 800,000 bolts, and 922 steel poles of various models weighing 100 tonnes each in the air -- about 230 meters above the Nujiang River.

"The technical difficulty and risks are both very rare," Yu said.

The bridge is a key project of the 220-km-long Dali-Ruili railway which is a key section of the China-Myanmar international railway corridor linking Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, with Yangon, the capital of Myanmar.

Upon completion of the Dali-Ruili railway, the transport time between the two cities will be cut from six hours to two.