The story behind "Crossing Mountains and Rivers"

In order to reduce the impact on elephants, the designers finally determined the route not to cross the forest directly, but to build two tunnels of more than 10 kilometers long through the mountain to minimize the impact on the ecological environment and elephant migration.

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On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Laos, the China-Laos Railway, which carries the friendship between the two countries, was opened for operation on December 3.

On the international train at a speed of 160 kilometers per hour, many passengers pulled out a coin and stood on the window sill to see how long it would take to fall.

"The coin can stand for a long time, which is related to the seamless connection of long steel rails." Tang Hongbing, assistant engineer of the Pu'er infrastructure section of China Railway Kunming Bureau Group Co., Ltd., said that the track quality index (that is, TQI value) of the Pusu railway is about 7, while the China-Laos railway requires less than 2.5, in order to make the tracks flatter and straighter, and the train pass more smoothly. "The smaller the TQI value, the better the proof line state."

"Either through the hole or through the air"

In the north square of Kunming Railway Station, the golden circular logo and pedestal are combined to form a zero-kilometer marker sculpture of the China-Laos Railway.

The theme of the sculpture is "Crossing mountains and rivers", which has three elements of "mountain peak", "bridge" and "train", and the overall shape is slightly inclined, reflecting the dynamic and speed of the railway.

The reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network took the green Fuxing train, departed from Kunming Station, and arrived at Mohan Station in Mengla County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture five hours later. The first stop of this "National Gate" is more than 20 kilometers away from the Laos Moding Port, and on the platform, you can see the mountains of Laos in the distance.

The China-Laos Railway, which crosses mountains and rivers, is more than 1,000 kilometers long, and it is impressive that tunnels and bridges are impressive. "Either through the cave, or through the air", Zhou Kunpeng, manager of the second branch of the Yumo Railway Project Department of the China Railway Tunnel Bureau, said that the total length of the domestic jade mill section of the China-Laos Railway is 507 kilometers, from north to south, it crosses the Mopan Mountain, Ailao Mountain, and Wuliang Mountain, across the Yuanjiang, Amo River, the Bianjiang River, and the Lancang River, there are 93 tunnels, as many as 15 tunnels of more than 10 kilometers, and the longest tunnel is 17.5 kilometers; the geological structure along the Yumo section is complex, with high geothermal heat, highland stress, high seismic intensity, and the construction difficulty is beyond expectations.

The Nearly 15-kilometer-long Xinping Tunnel took only 5 minutes for trains to roar through, but it took 4 years for construction workers to penetrate it. The Xinping Tunnel crosses 6 fault fracture zones, and water inrushes, mud, sand surges, and collapses continue to occur. One night, Li Ping, project manager of the Yumo Railway of the Tunnel Bureau, found that there were fine cracks in the cave during a routine inspection in the cave, and immediately decided to stop operations and evacuate personnel and equipment. The next morning, the gushing mud rushed the platform, the trolley, and the loader tens of meters away.

This is one of the 41 inrushes of water and mud in the Shinpyeong Tunnel. Every time the muddy water overturned the river and the sea surged out, it had to stop work, and the spraying equipment worth more than 3 million yuan was also submerged. The influx of water on February 5, 2017, lasted for more than five months, and the daily gushing out of the water reached more than 20,000 cubic meters, "the horizontal hole became a river, and I could only paddle in the cave to find a solution to the problem." Zhou Kunpeng said.

On the morning of April 26, 2020, the Xinping Tunnel broke through safely, and significant progress was made in the construction of the China-Laos Railway, ensuring that the entire line was completed on schedule.

Subsequently, Zhou Kunpeng led the team to the last Jingzhai Tunnel that did not penetrate, responsible for the remaining most difficult and dangerous 1602 meters of construction tasks. Affected by the Lancang River fault zone, the Jingzhai Tunnel not only has frequent mud surges, but also the temperature in the tunnel exceeds 40 degrees Celsius, up to 52 degrees Celsius, and more than 20 tons of ice need to be transported into the cave every day to cool down. This tunnel, the most difficult and dangerous tunnel on the entire line of the China-Laos Railway, identified by the expert group as a construction environment and conditions rare at home and abroad, was opened on June 5, 2020.

"There is no regularity in the geological construction of complex soft rock, which subverts the traditional experience of many tunnel people for decades." Wang Qingjian, chief civil engineer of the project department, said that a number of innovative equipment developed by technicians have become a weapon through all tunnels, and some of them have obtained national utility model patents.

Technological innovation has also set a world record for bridge construction on the China-Laos Railway. There are 136 bridges in the domestic jade mill section of the China-Laos Railway, most of which are far from the main road of the highway, and the equipment and materials used for construction need to be hoisted at high altitude, which is affected by the canyon monsoon and the risk of hoisting operations is extremely high.

With a total length of 832 meters, the Yuanjiang Double-line Special Bridge, with a maximum of 154 meters of piers and a main span of 49 meters, ranks first in the world for the same type of bridge. Xie Lu, chief engineer of the fourth branch of the Yumo Railway of the Fourth Bureau of China Railway, introduced that they adopted a variety of domestically pioneered process methods and construction schemes to ensure that the main span is accurate and provided a Chinese solution for the construction of bridges with similar geological conditions.

Travel through a rainforest nature reserve

Taking the Fuxing train to the Wild Elephant Valley Station in Xishuangbanna is the most exciting and imaginative, although you can't see elephants on the train.

Wild Elephant Valley Station is located in Mengyang Town, Jinghong City, which is an area where Asian elephants are active. The railroad designers analyzed the elephants' distribution and migration routes, and the final route direction avoided the elephants' main areas of activity. At one end of Yexianggu Station is the Mengyang Tunnel and the other end is the Xishuangbanna Tunnel, both of which are more than 10 kilometers long. This construction is like a pipe that runs through the interior of a mountain, rather than directly through the forest, minimizing the impact on the ecological environment and elephant migration.

Tunnels and bridges through sensitive areas of rainforest nature reserves are built in different ways. The Shanggang No. 1 Tunnel in Mengla County was descheduled, and the three boring faces originally designed were replaced by two, although the construction difficulty and cost were increased.

The 3.5-kilometer-long Olive Dam Special Bridge, with 108 piers, has reduced land occupation and the original highways and passages have not been affected.

During the construction process of bridges across the river, most of them use construction methods such as hanging basket suspension irrigation method and bracket cast-in-place method to carry out construction operations such as concrete pouring and welding of steel components. Workers work in fully enclosed "hanging baskets" to avoid concrete, welding flowers, etc. falling into the river.

Crossing the Nanla River in Wangtianshu Tropical Rainforest Park in Xishuangbanna, it is a national aquatic germplasm resources reserve for endemic fish, and there are 94 species of fish in the river, some of which are rare and endangered aquatic wildlife. The Second Courtyard of China Railway, which was responsible for the construction, set up piers at both ends of the riverbank and used a 64-meter long-span bridge to cross the Nanla River to reduce noise and vibration. During the construction period, water ecological restoration, fish breeding and aquatic ecological monitoring were also carried out.

The Fuxing travels south from Kunming, with beautiful subtropical scenery along the way. This romantic, lyrical wandering journey, because it is located in the suture belt where the Indian plate collides with the Eurasian plate, is the most dangerous and terrible area from the perspective of railway construction. But many high-tech construction methods make people on this train unable to feel its thrill.

In a simple temporary bungalow outside Mohan Station, it is the intelligent construction workstation of the Four Electric Projects of the China-Laos Railway. "Electrification is critical to the operation of a train, and the stability of its equipment directly affects the safety of passengers." Lai Peng, chief engineer of the jade mill project of The Wuhan Electrification Bureau of China Railway, said. Since the start of construction in August 2019, for the first time, they have applied the three major technologies of digital penetration management, THE INTEGRATED MEASUREMENT DEVICE OF CPII. CONSTRUCTION PARAMETERS BASED ON THE BEIDOU SYSTEM, AND THE SZP-I. TUNNEL INTEGRATED WORKING PLATFORM MACHINERY FOR HIGH-ALTITUDE OPERATION IN RAILWAY TUNNELS TO THE ELECTRIZATION PROJECT.

"Through the use of digital management platform and intelligent construction equipment technology, in less than two and a half years, all the newly built electrification projects in China and Laos have been completed, creating a new benchmark for the construction of China's standard electrification projects." Lai Peng said.

Employed more than 32,000 Laotian employees

The Mowan Project Department of Kunming Company of China Railway Eighth Bureau is located in the mountainous area of Huifulai Village, Meng'a County, Oudomxay Province, Laos, where transportation is inconvenient and education is backward. A few rows of low-rise houses opposite the project department's station, it is the only school in the village: Huifulai Primary and Secondary School.

Although the pitch outside the classroom is overgrown, the project department still often holds football matchmaking with the school, and also sends 4 staff members who know Lao chinese to the school to teach and donate clothes and school supplies to the children. On the evening of July 23, 2018, the dam of the Sangpian-Sangnamnei Hydropower Station in Sanam sai County, Attapeu Province, Laos, collapsed, flooding seven nearby villages and affecting more than 6,000 people. The project department immediately organized love donations to extend a helping hand to the disaster area.

After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in 2020, the project department sent masks, temperature guns and disinfectants to the Meng'a County government, and young volunteers came to Huifulai Primary and Secondary School to disinfect and sterilize classrooms and office spaces, distribute masks, hand sanitizer and other epidemic prevention supplies to students, and explain the safety knowledge of epidemic prevention and control.

The project department is located at the junction of Oudomxay and Luang Prabang provinces in Laos, and there are only winding hills and small roads between the villages. The project department not only built a new 40-kilometer road for the local area, but also rebuilt and expanded hundreds of kilometers of construction roads, and the village sections through which the road passes are all hardened with concrete, shortening the driving time from Huifulai Village to Luang Prabang Provincial City from the original 4 and a half hours to 3 hours.

Today, the villagers' lives have changed dramatically, with simple thatched huts turned into brick houses, and some families have bought motorcycles and pickup trucks. There are many shops, restaurants, barber shops and so on next to the project department station.

"The China-Laos Railway is a landmark project of China-Laos friendship, build a railway, make friends, and build a monument." A person in charge of the project department said. According to public information, incomplete statistics show that the construction of the entire China-Laos railway has hired more than 32,000 Laotian employees. The construction of the China-Laos railway has stimulated the development of local building materials supply, electricity, agriculture and animal husbandry, service industry, logistics and other industries in Laos.

Plans to help Laos train railway technicians are also underway. At the request of the Lao government, in April 2019, the China International Development Cooperation Agency approved the project of "Aiding Lao Railway Vocational and Technical College", and in July this year, the project was entrusted to Yunnan Province to organize and implement, and Kunming Railway Vocational and Technical College provided teacher training for Lao Railway Vocational and Technical College.

Sai Long was a Lao international student at Lanzhou Jiaotong University and is now employed as a teacher at Kunming Railway Vocational and Technical College. In 2020, the college enrolled 8 Lao international students, affected by the epidemic, international students can not come to the school to study, the school opened online teaching for them, Sai Long in Vientiane, Laos responsible for daily management and translation of teaching materials.

"The opening of the China-Laos Railway enables the college to play a more important role in cultivating international railway talents in Southeast Asia." Xie Wen, vice president of Kunming Railway Vocational and Technical College, said.

On December 4 this year, the first international freight train departed from Kunming Station to Vientiane, Laos. The next day, trains from Kunming Tengjun International Dry Port also arrived at Vientiane South Railway Station in Laos. The 33 cold chain containers loaded on the vehicle are all Yunnan vegetables. Subsequently, 33 cold chain containers will be loaded with tropical fruits from Southeast Asian origins such as Thailand and Laos, transported back to Kunming, and distributed to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing and other places, realizing the closed-loop operation of international cold chain public railway intermodal transport.

A China-Laos railway is benefiting the education, cultural exchanges and regional economic development of the two peoples.

China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Zhang Wenling Source: China Youth Daily

Source: China Youth Daily