On January 1, as the final section of the trestle deck was precisely positioned, Guangxi's longest sea-crossing railway bridge — the Tieshangang Sea-Crossing Grand Bridge of the Hepu-Zhanjiang High-Speed Railway — successfully completed its main offshore construction trestle, marking the full-scale launch of offshore main structure construction in the Guangxi section of the Hepu-Zhanjiang High-Speed Railway.

      Located in Hepu County, Guangxi, the Tieshangang Sea-Crossing Grand Bridge has a total length of 8,473.478 meters, of which nearly 4,500 meters cross Tieshangang Bay. It is a key control project of the Guangxi section of the Hepu-Zhanjiang High-Speed Railway. During bridge construction, a construction trestle must be built — that is, when constructing the sea-crossing and water-area portions of the bridge's main structure, steel or other high-strength materials are used to temporarily erect an auxiliary construction platform, mainly for personnel walking, material transport, and equipment support.

      The main offshore construction trestle completed this time has a total length of 6,372 meters and is an important auxiliary access route for the offshore construction of the Tieshangang Sea-Crossing Grand Bridge. During construction, the difficulties of strong winds and seawater erosion had to be overcome, while navigational passage requirements also had to be accommodated, making the task highly challenging. The project construction team innovatively adopted the "fishing method" technique, advancing erection simultaneously from the east and west banks and from the sea in three directions, and combined a steel pipe pile foundation with a Bailey beam structural system to ensure the stability of the trestle structure and meet the operational needs of heavy construction machinery passage and construction material transport.

     A 1,400-meter stretch of the Tieshangang Sea-Crossing Grand Bridge contains mangroves and some marine life. During construction, the project construction team upheld the concept of "ecological priority and green construction," adopting a curved trestle design and setting the trestle along tidal creeks to cleverly avoid dense mangrove areas; it also selected new electric rotary drilling rigs and installed oil containment booms to prevent oil pollution, minimizing the impact of construction on the surrounding environment and wildlife.

      The main line of the Hepu-Zhanjiang High-Speed Railway is about 139 kilometers long, with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour. It is an important component of the Baotou (Yinchuan)-Haikou Corridor and the Coastal Corridor in China's "Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal" high-speed railway network, and is positioned as an important interregional passenger dedicated railway of national significance. As of now, all early-start sections of the Guangxi section of the Hepu-Zhanjiang High-Speed Railway have commenced construction, with 4,199 bridge pile foundations and 128 bridge piers completed. After the project is completed and opened to traffic, it will be of great significance for expanding railway transport capacity along the coasts of Guangdong and Guangxi, optimizing and improving the regional railway network layout, facilitating travel for people along the line, promoting the construction of the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration, and advancing high-quality economic and social development along the route.