China is on another level developing a network of infrastructure on land and sea. These transport links are set to connect its thriving economy with those of Africa and Europe.
The nation is not letting time pass by as they are designing unbelievable modified construction machines that will get the tasks completed as soon as possible. President Xi Jinping’s ambitious Road and Belt initiative was launched back in 2013. The project aims to link two-thirds of the globe’s population in over 70 countries through a network of sea routes and land links. The lifetime investments that are worth trillions of dollars were sourced from participating countries, banks and the government of China. The scheme did not come without controversy. Critics pointed out that the project burdens the developing nations with billions of dollars of Chinese debt and also dismissed it as a projection of Chinese international guideline.
Nevertheless, proof of the Road and Belt are already visible in China and beyond. A fleet of new machines that will be used to build railway and bridges are being developed at a very high rate. So far, the Chinese government has already started to lay bridges that will be used to put on railways and roads. To do this, the engineering team invented the SLJ machine. It’s a device that can lift, carry and place a section of the tracks on connecting pillars to another pillar that are built with very heavy stones. The machine that is 92 meters long can lay sections of the track with the assistance of its 64 wheels. After placing, the vehicle proceeds to assemble another block. The machines swiftly roll forward to the part that had just laid the section to set another section. Each wheel is fixed in an entirely rotating block. This means that it can be able to move sideways.
Even when carrying a heavy load, the machine can still move at a speed of 5km/h. This way engineers ensure that the entire process is much faster than using traditional methods. The old method needed massive cranes to be designed so that they can be used to lay the sections. The entire machine is massive weighing 580 tons. This means that it’s more substantial than the railway traffic that will be running on the rail. This concludes that the bridges are stronger than necessary for all kind of rail traffic.
