Brilliant engineers in China have become the world’s first to build part of a massive overpass and rotate it into place so as not to disturb railways passing under the bridge. The 17,000 ton section at Wuhan City, was swung into place after being constructed parallel to the high speed railway track.
The whole process took only 90 minutes as engineers rotated the section 106 degrees on a 15 meter high axis. This intuitive solution was a first for China, but was necessary because this part of the railway was considered too important to be shut down temporarily. Upon completion, the 256-meter long overpass will span 11 railways including the 1,428 mile long Beijing-Guangzhou service.
The bridge will be open for traffic by the end of this month. With the country’s high speed rail network being the largest in the world, it is no wonder that the engineers did not deem it feasible to halt the track beneath the bridge. The necessity pushed the engineers to come up with a creative and innovative solution, proving that engineers can make anything possible.
