On September 21, the world’s first set of 600km/h high-speed maglev turnouts independently developed by China Railway Baoji Bridge Group Co., Ltd. (CRBBG) under CRHIC passes the factory acceptance organized by CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., Ltd. at Baoji, Shaanxi Province and is approved to leave the factory for site installation and commissioning.

The 600km/h high-speed maglev turnout constitutes a key research component of “Advanced Rail Transit' in the national 13th Five-Year Plan. CRBBG undertakes its design, manufacturing and installation. The said turnout is a kind of single flexible right hand one which is nearly 80m long, 3m wide and has a switch distance of nearly 4 meters. It has a straight direction speed of 600km per hour, making it the high-speed maglev turnout with the world’s highest passing speed to date.

According to experts, this turnout’s research and development is the first of its kind in the world and is a Chinese creation on no man’s land, achieving the R&D goal of taking the lead in the world. In the course of its research and development, the intelligent control system is developed to ensure the bending stress of the beam is minimized during the switching process; the eight-span continuous flexible turnout with big rigidity is designed to allow passing of high-speed maglev trains. In the course of manufacturing, the precision group welding and integral machining technology are applied to secure the precision of the turnout beam; proprietary tooling is made to allow overall flip of ultra-long, ultra-heavy, flexible turnout beam structure parts; the overall turnout static assembly technology is adopted to simulate the requirements of the line rail transit, bringing valuable experience for future construction of 600km/h high-speed maglev line.