Giant Chinese-made shield machine completes Yangtze River crossing | ShanghaiEye魔都眼

A massive Chinese-made tunneling machine successfully holed through an underwater tunnel traversing the Yangtze River on Thursday, paving the way for 350 km/h high-speed trains to cross the river in just two minutes. China's domestically developed "Linghang (Navigator)", the world's largest-diameter high-speed-rail shield tunneling machine, successfully drilled into an exit shaft on the riverbank of Taicang, Jiangsu Province.

Eighty-nine meters beneath the Yangtze River, the giant machine set a new world record for the longest continuous under-river crossing by a 15-meter-class shield machine, by drilling continuously for 11.325 kilometers over 27 months.

As a key section of the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway, the entire Chongming‑Taicang Yangtze River Tunnel is expected to be fully completed by the end of this year.