Milestone reached on Sino-Lao railway

Builders began to lay the first steel truss complex on Friday on Yuanjiang Railway Bridge - which has the tallest bridge pier in the world and the longest span between two piers - on the Chinese section of the 925.5-kilometer China-Laos railway, a major project in the Belt and Road Initiative.

The enormous metal framework, 13.5 meters long, 16 meters wide and 16 meters high with a weight of roughly 400 metric tons, is the first of 56 such structural components to stand on the 832.2-meter Yuanjiang Railway Bridge, said engineer Xie Lu from the China Railway No 4 Engineering Group Co Ltd (CREC4) - the company building it.

The dual-track bridge, spanning the V-shaped Honghe River Canyon, is one of 134 bridges being built on the 508.5-km Chinese section of the railway, which links Yuxi city in Southwest China's Yunnan province and the Lao capital Vientiane and will be fully operational in December 2021.