In 2009, Saudi Arabia , which has the world's largest oil production, issued a bidding notice to the world, boldly putting out $60 billion to build a high-speed rail from Mecca to Medina .
In theory, there must be brave men under heavy rewards, not to mention Germany and Japan, which claim to be the world's top high-speed rail technology, but after all countries sent engineers to conduct on-site inspections, they were all silent.
is nothing more. It is precisely because from Medina to Mecca that you must pass through the world's second largest desert - Arabian Desert . It has drought all year round, and the temperature difference between day and night is huge, and most of it is mobile desert , which is very unfavorable to the construction of high-speed rail.
Therefore, high-speed railway experts such as Japan and Germany asserted that it is impossible to build a high-speed railway here. However, one country has made a different voice: can be built. This country is China.
Back then, China, which had just made its mark in high-speed rail technology, resolutely took on a difficult order. Everyone in the world was waiting to see how China could complete this "impossible" project.
1. Learn from strengths and weaknesses, adapt to local conditions and adapt to local conditions. As early as the 1990s, China began its plan to develop high-speed rail, but due to decades of research back to the West, China's high-speed rail progress has been difficult to enter the forefront of the world.
In 1998, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen High-speed Railway developed jointly by China and South Korea reached a maximum speed of 200km/h, becoming the first railway in Chinese history to meet the high-speed indicator. After , China's research on magnetic levitation trains has gradually been put on the agenda and entered everyone's vision. Research speed such as
can actually be called slow, but it is still hard to match the world's first-class high-speed rail technology at that time.
In 2003, the country formally established the basic idea of trading markets for technology, and sought cooperation with foreign companies to accelerate the development of its own high-speed rail technology.
Europe has a small area and has initially formed its own railway pattern. The United States has developed its own very mature short-term aviation to replace the operation of ground railways. Africa's economy is relatively backward. The countries such as Saudi Arabia and Central Asia mentioned in this article have climatic and geographical conditions that are extremely inconvenient to build high-speed rails.
Therefore, China is the country with the largest demand for high-speed rail in the world and is most likely to build high-speed rail. In the vast territory, the four horizontal and four vertical railway market makes all enterprises with the world's top technology dare not give up. After all, there is no difference between trains that cannot be sold and scrap iron.
With the unremitting efforts and negotiations of the China Railway Administration and also with the support of China's huge market, in 2005, China finally signed cooperation contracts with Germany, Japan, France and Canada, absorbing advanced technologies from various countries to improve China's high-speed rail.
After that, it will be the stage of rapid development of China's high-speed rail. In 2008, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway was opened, and the mainland built a high-speed railway with a maximum speed of 350km/h for the first time. In 2009, the Wuhan-Guangzhou section of the Beijing-Guangzhou High-speed Railway was opened and operated, breaking the bottleneck of the Spring Festival travel rush. China officially entered the high-speed railway era.
In 2017, the four horizontal and four vertical high-speed rail pattern promised by China that year was officially opened to traffic, and another achievement of a real infrastructure maniac was quietly born.
When we re-set the time until 2009, Saudi Arabia sent a bidding signal to the world. When German and Japanese companies considered the difficulties and the price they had to overcome in the construction of this railway, they chose to withdraw one after another. However, China, which had just integrated high-speed rail technology, still took this step.
Maimai High-speed Railway is like a harsh test site, the flowing desert and the huge day-night temperature difference are all enemies of high-speed railway construction.
But Saudi As the world's largest oil power, once this order is successfully completed, it will greatly improve the mutual exchange between the two countries, and at the same time, it can also make a first-hand exploration of railway construction in domestic desert areas.
There are no mountains that cannot be crossed, nor are there deserts that cannot be walked out of.China has always upheld the belief that it is to open a road through mountains and build a bridge across water, "I come, I see you, I conquer."
2. New technology, high-quality
Maimai Expressway construction difficulties are obvious. The three biggest problems of are the burial and wear of routes and electrical communication facilities by hot drought, wind and sand, and the weak roadbed caused by the desert environment.
The first problem is enough to stump many people. The tropical desert climate is hot and drought. Saudi Arabia is the country with the largest water desalination production in Shanghai in the world. It can be imagined that their water storage and precipitation are sparse.
The surface temperature can reach up to 70 degrees Celsius, the temperature in summer can also reach 55 degrees Celsius, and the temperature difference between day and night reaches 30 degrees Celsius. In addition to cities and deserts, the living conditions are extremely harsh, and the impact of the construction environment that workers need to bear is also very huge.
Moreover, the hot climate is extremely easy to cause breakage and damage to the construction materials, which also has higher quality and technical requirements for the building materials.
The problem of wind and sand is the most difficult of the three problems. After all, in the world's second largest desert, it is difficult for you to stop the occurrence of sandstorms, and Saudi Arabia spends one-third of the year wind and sand.
Sandstorms will cause wear and erosion of equipment. Including electrical facilities and communication facilities, the physical equipment will be buried, while wireless communication will be seriously interfered with.
Once a sandstorm comes, it seems that it is in an independent world and it is difficult to contact others through communication means. Saudi Arabia has handed over to my country to build a fully electrified high-speed railway, so this is a difficult problem that must be overcome.
And the sandstorm will also cause the dunes to move, so that the terrain will constantly change. The desert is not a static desert, but is composed of numerous flowing sand dunes that are difficult to distinguish.
Therefore, flowing sand will bury the foundation, rail and sleepers and other equipment that have been laid. Drag them back under the yellow sand. After a long time, the maintenance cost will be extremely high, and the service life will be greatly shortened.
The weak roadbed is a common problem in all desert terrain. The fine sand is far less hard than the soil, and it is difficult to condense into a fixed-shaped hard block with a very loose texture. Under such terrain, it is difficult to maintain a state of immobility even if the foundation is laid.
To build a high-speed rail on such a land, you either learn from Yugong to move mountains and remove the entire desert, or you have to find another way out from technical means.
However, China's iterative new high-speed railway technology also has advantages that other countries cannot match to solve such problems.
mentioned earlier that China actually has the idea of using the construction of the Maimai High-speed Railway as a test field, but similarly, China can also flexibly apply the sand control experience accumulated in China for a long time to the construction of the Maimai High-speed Railway.
In recent years, as a major manufacturing country, China has also made breakthroughs in the manufacturing of high-end materials, so it has given great support to the construction of Maimai High-speed Railway.
. The problem of wind and sand is that while building the railway, Chinese engineers have also begun to control sand along the line. In addition to the traditional planting of sand plants to stabilize the sand, they also built 40-meter-wide sand accumulation platforms and sand-blocking ditches on both sides of the railway, which are the so-called "one ditch, one" strategy to reduce the wear of wind and sand on the railway.
Those sand dunes that are unpredictable against climate change and the frequency of wind and sand are blocked outside the railway by grass grids. The "ditch and one" are combined to form a real sand-blocking dam, like a row of unmoving giants faithfully guarding both sides of the railway.
In addition, Chinese engineers have also made some modifications to these inexhaustible sand in the local area.
After research, China used impact rolling method and shock-impacting and extrusion method to fix the sand and soil within a certain range through low frequency and large amplitude methods, and eliminate the gaps between the sand to the greatest extent, thereby increasing the tightness of the sand.
Through this method, the sand and soil become a high-density solid sand and soil layer, which greatly reduces fluidity, increases the firmness of the roadbed, and ensures the safety and quality of railway construction.
Of course, in order to prevent wind and sand, China has not only made a single effort. In addition, China has also adopted the method of flat sand fixing, using anchor cable reinforcement and anchor rod hang nets to tame the wind and sand in the Arabian Desert.
When we first responded to the problem of wind and sand, some experts once proposed that the foundation of the railway was poured by transporting gravel. However, for a 480-kilometer-long railway, the project volume was a bit too huge, so the emerging technologies of sand making above were found.
However, gravel still has better stability and safety than sand. Therefore, in order to add the last insurance to the safe driving of this railway, Chinese engineers still used asphalt and gravel to pave the surface of the sand to prevent wind and sand and maintain stability.
It has to be said that China has always been perfect in infrastructure.
In addition, as a religious country, Saudi Arabia emphasized at the beginning of the subcontracting that the project must have its own people involved and that Muslims must provide a place for religious activities.
However, as we all know, Saudi Arabia is very rich because of oil and has a very high per capita GDP, which has led to the employment wages of local workers being more than three times higher than those of domestic workers, greatly increasing labor costs.
Secondly, Mecca and Medina are both the two holy cities of Islam , and are as famous internationally as Jerusalem . Therefore, it is also stipulated here that people who are not Muslims cannot enter the holy city, no matter what the reason is.
However, Saudi Arabia's workers' technical capabilities are difficult to meet the requirements of railway construction. Although China has indeed helped Saudi Arabia cultivate a group of high-speed rail construction talents during the construction process, its technical professionalism is far from enough.
In order to solve this problem, China had to recruit skilled workers from China who are also Muslims to participate in the construction of the Maimai Railway.
In the end, the Maimai Railway was completed one year earlier than expected, and the Mecca Station Super Bridge, which has the highest technical content and the most difficult construction, was completely built independently by China.
The total length of this bridge is 1556 meters, spans 5 highways, with a maximum width of 72.6 meters, making it the largest bridge among the world's high-speed railway bridges.
This undoubtedly better demonstrates China's strength in high-speed rail construction, and the "infrastructure maniac" is well-known.
3. It’s not unreasonable to see the horse.
After the completion of the Maimai high-speed railway, China also did some calculations.
Although it seems that Saudi Arabia's leaders waved their hands and took out $60 billion to build the Maimai Railway, which seems rich, but in fact, the unprecedented cost of building a high-speed rail in the desert was more than imagined.
Someone discovered that in fact, building this railway was more like aid, and China lost 4.1 billion US dollars, so some sarcastic voices appeared, believing that Germany and Japan saw through it in the early days that this was a thankless job, so they gave up early, and China became the sucker.
But, are we really losing a lot? Saudi Arabia, a discerning person, can tell that it is a mess project. Is China so unsavvy?
International relations emphasize "recitation". We have worked so hard to build this railway for Saudi Arabia, and the invisible benefits follow one after another.
Mecca and Medina are not only the holy cities of Saudi Arabia, but also the holy cities in the minds of all Muslims in the world. Every December of the Islamic calendar, millions of Muslims will go to the holy city to participate in the hajj.
Saudi Arabia is in the desert, and the traffic conditions are very bad. The asphalt road is only 47,529 kilometers, the expressway is 3,891 kilometers, and the total length of the railway is only 1,828 kilometers. Every time it comes to the Hajj, the traffic is extremely congested.
After the completion of Maimai Expressway, the itinerary time of the two places was shortened from 4 hours to 2 hours. After only more than two years of operation, the passenger volume of Ghana exceeded 15 million, which is enough to show how frequently this railway is used.
After experiencing this railway, Saudi people couldn't help but exclaim at Chinese technology. As the international high-speed rail market is gradually opened, the name of China's high-speed rail technology has been resoundingly opened, which is also conducive to other orders we undertake in the future.
And China helped Saudi Arabia complete this work excellently. As a major oil country, Saudi Arabia and China have a closer relationship and have better energy guarantees.
As we all know, in recent years, the oil crisis in , international oil prices have skyrocketed, and the United States has often used energy issues to control other countries. China and Saudi Arabia have established diplomatic relations with friendly countries, which can solve this difficult problem.
In addition, our country has a vast territory and also has areas with severe desertification. We also need the technology to build high-speed rail in the desert, and Saudi Arabia is an excellent experimental opportunity this time.
The method of plane sand fixing adopted by China in Saudi Arabia, the use of anchor cable reinforcement and anchor rod hanging nets and other engineering projects were soon applied to the construction of Beijing Xin Expressway .
In the Linhe section of the Beijing-Xinjiang Expressway, it is necessary to cross the three deserts of Bada Jilin, Tenggeri and Ulanbu. The desert section is 500 kilometers long. The method of windproof sand belts and plants to fix sand has been widely used. About 470,000 red willows from sand were planted, opening up a new pattern of China's high-speed rail.
and and also need to cross Taklamakan Desert . The sand fixing method is also used: impact crushing method and shock crushing method to consolidate the foundation and meet the construction standards.
Therefore, China has not suffered a big loss in overcoming the difficulty of desert high-speed rail. Instead, our high-speed rail technology has gained recognition from the world and has also made its own name. Even if we compete with the Japanese Derby of the old high-speed rail powerhouse, we still have high-tech that they do not have.
In this era of attaching importance to intellectual property rights, this is not a new and powerful start.
