Report from our correspondent: In the early morning of September 1st, as large-scale track maintenance machinery started with a whistle on the Tianjin section of the Beijing-Shanghai Railway, the national railway autumn track centralized maintenance project officially kicked off. This centralized maintenance involves 18 railway bureau group companies, covering a total of 12,000 kilometers of conventional speed railways and high-speed railway lines, including key transportation corridors in Northeast China, North China, East China, etc.

This centralized maintenance is centered around "disease rectification and precise maintenance", focusing on comprehensive treatment of issues such as rail damage, sleeper failure, ballast compaction, and track geometric dimension deviations. At the construction site, large machinery such as rail grinding machines, tamping machines, and screening machines work in coordination. The grinding machine polishes the rail surface to a smooth and flat finish using high-speed rotating grinding wheels. The screening machine goes deep into the bottom of the ballast to remove debris and compacted gravel, while the tamping machine precisely compacts the ballast at the bottom of the sleepers. Meanwhile, maintenance personnel comprehensively replace and fasten aging fish plates and loose bolts, and conduct ultrasonic flaw detection on rail welds. According to the railway department, during the centralized maintenance period, an operation mode of "mechanization as the mainstay, manual work as the supplement" will be implemented, with over 230 mechanical equipment and more than 8,600 workers invested daily. It is expected that all maintenance tasks will be completed by November 30, by which time the smoothness of the rails will be improved by 40%, providing safety guarantees for the transportation of key materials such as coal and grain in winter and for passenger travel.