On December 3, China-Laos Railway begins operation. The entire length of China-Laos Railway is 1,035 kilometres and consists of two sections, the Chinese section and the Laos section, with high mountains and deep valleys and complex geology along the way, crossing numerous water systems such as the Mekong River. The Yuanjiang Dual-track Super Major Bridge is the controlling project of the China-Laos Railway and is one of the most difficult projects on the whole line. It is located in Yuanjiang County, Yunnan Province, with a total length of 832.2 metres, including 768 metres of steel truss girders and a total weight of about 21,000 tons. China Railway Jiujiang Bridge Engineering Co., Ltd., a CRHIC subsidiary company, is mainly responsible for the erection of the steel truss girders of the bridge and the installation of the steel structure of the ultra-high temporary pier. Since the start of the project in October 2016, all the construction personnel of Jiujiang solved major problems of the bridge integrating high pier and large span in the mountains and valleys. It took nearly four years and the bridge was successfully completed on July 1, 2020. The completion of the bridge has created a number of records: the 249m main span of the top-bearing continuous steel truss girders is the highest in the world, the height of the main pier (154m, equivalent to 54 floors) is the highest in the world of its kind, and the height of the super-high temporary pier (133m, equivalent to 48 floors) is the highest of its kind in China.
In the construction of China-Laos Railway, CRBBG, a CRHIC subsidiary company, won the bid of supply contract for 8 models and more than 100 sets of railway turnouts, covering all models of turnouts used in the project. On December 20, 2019, the contract for the China-Laos Railway turnout project was signed in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
In July 2017, 12 sets of concrete mixing plants developed by CRSIC, a CRHIC subsidiary company, began to operate at the construction site of the Laos section of the China-Laos Railway, helping the rapid construction of the railway. A total of 80 people from 7 installation teams were dispatched from CRSIC to fully start the on-site installation at 7 sites, and the 12 sets of concrete mixing plants were transported and installed within 2 months. The site personnel made full advantage of technical research and development, combined with the environment and landscape characteristics of Laos, and adjusted parameters in the control system according to the characteristics of Laos' high rainfall and high water content of local sand, so that to ensure a more reasonable proportioning factor of raw materials. In addition, the JQT180 bridge-erecting crane and MDEL180 transporter developed by CRSIC were used for the construction of girder making, transporting and erection in the girder making yard of the China-Laos Railway line from Boten to Vientiane.