In less than six hours, girder replacement of the curved section of a double-track railway bridge, Fengjiazhuang No. 2 Bridge in Gaomi, a county-level city in east China's Shandong Province, was completed at 3:30 a.m. (BJT) on April 21. Ten minutes later, the first car had a trial run through the bridge, marking the first time beams have been replaced and reinforced in a curved section of a railway bridge with double tracks in China.

The 330-minute of repair work mainly included removing the damaged girder after cutting through the existing deck slab and diaphragms, and placing a 460-ton new girder in a full span with intact reinforcement before installing portions of new deck slab and diaphragm to the bridge. 

Due to the vertical altitude difference of 20 meters between the damaged T-beam and the new one as well as the inherent clambers of all girders, the perfect match of the new girder to the existing parts of the bridge has been considered to be the biggest challenge of construction task like this as it requires delicate care in determining a proper repair sequence as well as a masterful construction technique.

Starting from 10:15 p.m. on April 20, the construction work involved hundreds of workers affiliated with China Railway 14th Bureau Group Co., a subsidiary construction enterprise of China Railway Bureau Groups that mostly manages the design and construction of railway, highway, bridge, tunnel and urban transit rail as well as municipal infrastructures.

The Fengjiazhuang No. 2 Bridge was reportedly impaired on December 31, 2019, when a freight truck illegally carrying oversized cargos scratched badly on the bridge, hence the damage. Although the local railway department immediately adopted temporary measures of reinforcement to ensure the smooth passage of trains, the east span of the bridge still required further lockdown and repair at that time to guarantee the safety of railway traffic while elongating the service life of the bridge.

Once being reported, the story soon became one of the most frequently searched topics on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, with netizens marveling again at the blistering pace of development of China's capital construction.

"The 'China Speed' really blows me away," commented Weibo user @xianyangqindie. "I couldn't even build a Lego house faster than you did with the real bridge," remarked Weibo user @sannian2banyexianglun. Meanwhile, there are also a large number of users like @aningder saluting the construction workers who have made contribution behind the scene.

This was not the first time that beam replacement and reinforcement of a railway bridge has taken place in China. On September 23, 2019, the beam replacement construction of the largest existing railway bridge nationwide, Xibo River Bridge of the Jingtong Railway, was successfully completed with the conclusion of a tamping operation. During a 7-day construction period, the 46-hole, 92-piece concrete box girders of 13 bridges were demolished and replaced under the construction of the China Railway 20th Bureau Group Co.