On the morning of June 30, the construction site of the Yangtze River Tunnel of the Yancheng-Yixing High-Speed Railway in Jingjiang was bustling with activity as the Sutie "Fenji" shield machine began its launch and excavation. The shield machine will bore 6,710 meters underground, crossing beneath the Yangtze River.

　　The Yangtze River Tunnel of the Yancheng-Yixing High-Speed Railway is a controlling project for the entire line. The tunnel connects Jingjiang City of Taizhou to the north and Jiangyin City of Wuxi to the south, with a total length of 8,130 meters. It adopts a single-tube, double-track design with a designed speed of 250 kilometers per hour and is China's first high-speed railway shield tunnel to use socket-and-spigot segment joints. The maximum burial depth of the tunnel is 71 meters.

　　"The domestically produced super-large-diameter shield machine Sutie 'Fenji' put into use this time was tailor-made for the complex geological conditions of the Yangtze River Tunnel. The whole machine is about 145 meters long, with a total weight of about 3,800 tons and an excavation diameter of 14.33 meters," introduced An Jichao, deputy chief mechanical engineer of the shield tunneling work area.

　　It is reported that the Yancheng-Yixing High-Speed Railway is a backbone line of Jiangsu's "six vertical and six horizontal" high-speed railway network and an important north-south connecting line of the national "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed railway network. The main line has a total length of 311 kilometers, starting from Yancheng City in the north, passing through Taizhou City in the middle, crossing the Yangtze River natural barrier, and then passing through Wuxi City and Changzhou City before ending in Yixing City.

　　At present, all sections of the pre-station works within Wuxi for the Yancheng-Yixing High-Speed Railway are under intensive construction. More than 13,000 bridge pile foundations have been completed, about 820 pile caps have been poured, and nearly 260 pier bodies have been built. Once completed in the future, this high-speed railway will promote deep interconnection among northern, central, and southern Jiangsu, help Wuxi upgrade from a node on the Shanghai-Nanjing corridor to a cross-river integration hub, further enhance the convenience of cross-regional travel, and make travel for citizens more efficient and smooth.

       Source: Wuxi New Media