Fuzhou, 20 Jan (Xinhua) -- At about 2 a.m. on January 20, with polished steel rails at his feet and the whistle of the sea breeze in his ears, 29-year-old Hu Peng stood intently on the high-altitude platform of a catenary work vehicle, and his co-workers carefully rinsed the catenary insulators stained with sea salt with high-pressure water guns.
↑ On January 20, Hu Peng (part 1) inspected the railway catenary power supply equipment. (Photo by Xinhua news agency reporter Lin Shanchuan)
"The cross-sea bridge is high humidity and high salt, if there is no regular cleaning, once the insulation performance drops, the line will easily trip, affecting the operation of the high-speed rail." There is not much time left for Hu Peng and his co-workers: every day around 23:00, the last train passes by, and at 6 o'clock the next day, the first train is ushered in. Therefore, starting at about 0 o'clock and ending the work around 4 o'clock, the 26 workers have become accustomed to the work rhythm of "day and night out".
Hu Peng is the foreman of the Pingtan Power Supply Zone of the Changle East Workshop of the Fuzhou Power Supply Section. In 2020, on the eve of the opening of the Fuping Railway, he took the initiative to apply for transfer from the Pusu Railway to the high-speed rail work. Since then, he has become a "Spider-Man" at sea.
"My job is to ensure the normal power supply of catenary lines in the work area. However, seemingly simple maintenance operations on other routes have become more cautious because of the encounter with a cross-sea bridge. Hu Peng said.
↑On January 20, the catenary workers of the Pingtan Power Supply Zone of the Fuzhou Power Supply Section of China Railway Nanchang Bureau Group Co., Ltd. washed the sea salt attached to the catenary insulators. (Photo by Xinhua news agency reporter Lin Shanchuan)
The Pingtan Public Railway Dual-Purpose Cross-Sea Bridge, with a total length of 16.36 kilometers, is located in the Pingtan Strait, where the level 6 windy days of the year exceed 300 days, and the maximum tidal difference is more than 7 meters. In order to ensure driving safety, a total of more than 30 kilometers of wind barriers have been installed on both sides of the bridge.
When the catenary operation vehicle drove on the cross-sea bridge, more than 40 meters under its feet was a rough and dark sea, and the catenary was overhead. The vast fog filled the sea, and I could faintly see the fishing fires on the surface of the sea. Standing on the platform of the work truck, the salty and wet sea breeze poured in from all directions, and in a few moments, the bare skin was frozen and unconscious.
Hu Peng showed reporters his fully armed "head" of cold protection during winter work: overalls, raincoats, hard hats, and insulating gloves. In order to keep out the cold, he also used the warm baby closely and carried a large pot of hot water with him.
↑On January 19, Zheng Hua (left), foreman of the Pingtan Road Bridge Maintenance and Repair Zone of the Fuzhou Engineering Section of China Railway Nanchang Bureau Group Co., Ltd., and his co-workers inspected the status of the steel protection layer of the concrete piers on the Pingtan Strait Railway Bridge. (Photo by Xinhua news agency reporter Lin Shanchuan)
Hu Peng, from Henan, had never seen the "power" of a coastal typhoon before. A typhoon hit the Fujian coast last summer, and all the trains were suspended, but all the workers in the power supply section went backwards and patrolled the line along the bridge. This experience makes it difficult for Hu Peng to forget: "We are sitting on the maintenance car, and the 'afterglow' of the typhoon is still there." The gust of wind outside whistled, and the instruments of the maintenance vehicle showed an instantaneous wind force of 12. As soon as I leaned out, the rain was beating obliquely on my face. ”
Because of the special operating environment, the work area has formulated safety measures for specific problems that may occur in maintenance. In order to solve the problem of possible temperature loss during long-term operation, the workers came up with a way to wear raincoats; in order to solve the problem of sea salt adhesion causing the insulator to flash trip, they sprayed a special insulating layer on the insulator; in order to solve the possible safety risks of working at height on the sea surface, the workers wore double insurance seat belts to ensure that nothing was wrong...
This group of "Spider-Man", whose average age is less than 30 years old, stuck to their posts during the Spring Festival, maintaining the safety of more than 2,000 sets of catenary equipment on the bridge and providing safety for high-speed rail trains.