Track laying for railway bridge to Russia ends in Heilongjiang
During its construction, builders dealt with many difficulties, such as the bitter winter cold.
"The lowest temperature can drop to-40 C with strong wind over the frozen Heilong River," said Li Huachao, chief engineer of the Tongjiang railway bridge project for China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group. "However, the concrete doesn't work at-5 C.
"To finish the project on time, we built a 10,000-square-meter greenhouse and installed boilers in it to keep the temperature around 15 C.The boilers also provided the warm water needed to mix concrete inside the greenhouse.
"Although it was only several kilometers from the greenhouse to the farthest construction site of the bridge, we wrapped the tanks with thick quilts during transportation of the concrete to maintain the temperature."
In March 2019, the main body of the bridge was connected from both sides in China and Russia, and the track-laying started soon after.
