On December 24, 2024, the much-anticipated Padma Bridge Rail Link Project in Bangladesh officially opened across its entire line to traffic. Since its opening, the telecommunication and signaling equipment provided by CASCO has been operating stably, earning praise and recognition from the client. This railway efficiently connects over 20 regions in southern Bangladesh with the capital city of Dhaka, significantly promoting the rapid flow of talents and economic and trade activities.
The construction of the Padma Bridge began in 2015, marking the start of a decade-long journey to realize this dream road. Tens of thousands of staff from China and Bangladesh have passionately contributed to this monumental project in Bangladesh's history. Liu Ji, Deputy Project Manager at CASCO, was fortunate to be one of them. He spent four years stationed at the project site, witnessing the deep friendship forged between China and Bangladesh through this bridge.
The Padma Bridge Rail Link project (hereinafter referred to as the "PBRLP") is a key project under the "Belt and Road" cooperation framework between China and Bangladesh. It is also the largest infrastructure project in Bangladesh in terms of investment. China Railway Corporation is the general contractor, and CASCO, as the EPC subcontractor for telecommunication and signaling, is fully responsible for the telecommunication and signaling project.
In 2015, CASCO began preliminary research on the telecommunication and signaling project. Liu Ji officially joined the PBRLP team in October 2019, making it the highlight of his career so far.
"I clearly remember it was January 3, 2020, just after the New Year's holiday, when I was summoned to Bangladesh to assist in drafting the technical proposal for the PBRLP," Liu Ji said. He admitted that he was initially excited, because he could participate in this key "Belt and Road" project. Also the novelty of being in a foreign country made him feel like a confident adventurer facing unknown challenges with curiosity and optimism. However, as the project progressed, various obstacles began to emerge.
A Difficult Journey of Collaboration, Starting with an A3 Drawing
In November 2020, after five revisions, the telecommunication and signaling technical proposal drafted by CASCO for the PBRLP was finally confirmed by the client. Liu Ji then led the team to start the engineering design.
"When I joined the team, the technical proposal was nearing completion, and the final stage went smoothly, so I didn't anticipate the challenges that lay ahead," Liu Ji said. After the design work started, he truly realized the difficulty of communicating with various parties, the numerous details that needed to be coordinated, and the huge challenges faced, which were unprecedented in his career. "Can you imagine? It took us two months to complete the first signaling layout, which was just an A3-sized drawing!"
Of course, this signaling layout was not a simple plan; it was a crucial foundational document that determined the consistency of signaling design across various stations and served as the "technical foundation" for the entire signaling system. "It's understandable to put more effort into important documents, but we were mainly hampered by communication with Mohkless," Liu Ji explained.
Mohkless was the technical consultant from the third-party supervision company hired by the client. He was also an experienced senior engineer in Bangladesh, still contributing to the country's railway construction at the age of 70. He often personally led inspections of construction progress and quality on site. He had a very rigorous work style but was also somewhat conservative and stubborn. Liu Ji said that for a long time, his relationship with Mohkless could be described as a "battle of wits."
Liu Ji and Mohkless
"Actually, I knew he wasn't deliberately making things difficult for us. It's just that the Bangladeshi railway signaling market has long been dominated by European, Japanese, Korean, and Indian technologies. This was the first time that a Chinese technical solution was adopted, and he lacked understanding and trust in our technical capabilities. Plus, we had significant differences in language, culture, communication styles, and working methods, which inevitably led to communication barriers," Liu Ji explained. Technologies that CASCO considered mature required a lot of effort to explain and convince others, which was initially very frustrating.
Building trust from scratch is difficult, but once established, it becomes unbreakable. Through countless "battles" with Mohkless, the CASCO team gradually won over this strict advisor with their excellent technical strength and professional performance. He began to adopt CASCO’s suggestions more often and approved drawings more quickly. By September 2021, all engineering design drawings (over 140 drawing numbers) for the initial operation section were approved; by June 2023, all engineering design drawings (556 drawing numbers) for the entire line were also approved, providing more time for subsequent on-site construction of the telecommunication and signaling systems.
Discussing Issues with Mohkless
Now Mohkless had transformed from the "tough nut to crack in communication" as described by Liu Ji into a "self-promoting advocate" for CASCO. He not only always personally helped Liu Ji revise drawings and write explanations but also accompanied Liu Ji to presentation meetings, provided technical Q&A, and even enthusiastically served as a technical translator. During the subsequent construction process, whenever someone questioned the telecommunication and signaling project, Mohkless would say, "Don't worry. CASCO's progress and quality are definitely not a problem!"
At the project site with Mohkless
Construction with EPC model is the real boss
Bangladesh is known as the land of a thousand rivers, with numerous waterways and natural barriers. The PBRLP spans over 168 kilometers, crossing 66 bridges of various sizes and passing through 20 stations. The construction of telecommunication and signaling was quite complex. After completing the engineering design, Liu Ji began managing the telecommunication and signaling project, only to find that the challenges faced during the design were nothing compared to the difficulties encountered during the construction.
Due to the lack of unified standards for Bangladesh's railways (such as different track gauges, including meter gauge, broad gauge, and mixed gauge), the hardware infrastructure of various sections and stations also varied. There was no standard solution that could be applied. Therefore, all technical equipment for the PBRLP had to be adaptively adjusted based on actual conditions. Bhanga Station was such a special case, which Liu Ji still remembers vividly.
Bhanga Station is an important station connecting the north and south sections of railway. It is an aging station whose infrastructure has not been upgraded to accommodate the new line. Therefore, difficulties arose when installing new equipment such as electric point machines.
"We now use electric point machines as an industry standard, but Bhanga Station's infrastructure is still stuck in the hand-thrown switch era of the last century," Liu Ji said with a bitter smile. Since the client was unwilling to invest in upgrading Bhanga Station's switches, CASCO had to modify the point machines to overcome the differences in installation and adapt them to the older manual switch mode without compromising performance. "It's like installing the latest software on an ancient desktop computer and ensuring it doesn't crash while running," Liu Ji said, revealing the hardships they faced. According to him, to match the various hardware along the entire line, CASCO had to make similar adaptive modifications to many already mature devices, some of which had to be redesigned, prototyped, tested, revised, and tested again from the drawing stage, causing a lot of trouble.
The Manual Switch at Bhanga Station
Although daunting challenges kept coming, making Liu Ji feel stressed, helpless, and even wronged at times, he also saw the other side of the coin. "These four years have been like a journey of leveling up, and my personal abilities have been comprehensively improved. I have transformed from a draftsman into a versatile talent who can write proposals, give presentations, and even understands trade, transportation, and product design," Liu Ji said with a smile.
Over a thousand days and nights, igniting four years of passion
Chinese people have always had a strong homesickness, but now Liu Ji finds himself missing a foreign land while on his native soil. Every time he sees news related to the Padma Bridge railway, he can't help but recall his passionate years in Bangladesh...
"I've spent over a thousand days in Bangladesh. To be honest, I really wasn't used to it at first," Liu Ji admitted. His initial impression of Bangladesh was not good, with humid climate, congested traffic, dirty environment, and swarms of mosquitoes. He found it hard to adapt to everything from the food to the accommodation, and he couldn't wait to return home for a break after just a month. Later, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally, international flights between China and Bangladesh were frequently canceled, making returning home a luxury. Liu Ji had no choice but to adopt an attitude of making the best of the situation and gradually integrate into local life. At one point, he stayed in Bangladesh for 14 consecutive months.
"In the early days, there were only four of us, staying in a Chinese hotel. Apart from work, we generally didn't go out, and the feeling of loneliness was quite strong," Liu Ji said. They relied on each other for support to get through it, and every evening after dinner, the four of them would gather around the stove and talk, swatting mosquitoes while taking turns telling stories. "This revolutionary friendship is truly invaluable," he said with a smile. Looking back now, he sees it as finding joy in hardship. Later, the company rented a house as a long-term office and residence for the team, and their living conditions improved significantly.
However, there was nothing they could do to improve the external transportation environment. In the early stages of the project, Liu Ji and his colleagues often had to visit various stations and sections for on-site inspections, sometimes several times a week. Each trip was like an outdoor expedition – they had to travel through chaotic and congested urban areas, then take a boat across the Padma River, and finally travel by car to the station on the other side. The one-way trip took a solid half a day. They almost always set out at six or seven in the morning and didn't return until it was dark. "The Padma River is wide, and even with a speedboat, it takes at least 40 minutes to cross. If it's a regular ferry, it can take several hours," he said. Not only that, but the river currents are swift, and the weather changes frequently. Sometimes the boat would drift off course, and sometimes they would be caught in a sudden downpour in the middle of the river. Each crossing was a test of patience and luck.
The project team crosses the river by speedboat
"If you've experienced the hardships of crossing the river, you can deeply understand the benefits and significance the Padma Bridge railway brings to the local people," Liu Ji exclaimed. The crisscrossing rivers seem to cut many gaps in Bangladesh's transportation network, forcing local residents to rely on boats for crossing, a mode of transportation that is extremely unsafe and inefficient, greatly limiting local economic development. However, once the Padma Bridge railway is fully operational, it will not only connect multiple river-crossing bridges and several existing railway lines in Bangladesh, but also open up the long-divided north-south transportation artery, boosting regional economic growth. It will also pave the way for local residents, providing them with more opportunities and possibilities to improve their lives and change their destinies.
According to official data from Bangladesh, once the entire line of Padma Bridge railway is in operation, the travel time from the southern city of Jessore to the capital Dhaka can be shortened to 2 hours, and it is expected to drive a 1.5% increase in Bangladesh's GDP, benefiting more than half of the country's population. It is truly a road to prosperity.
"Witnessing a project change a country's life is both a valuable work experience and a fortunate event in life," Liu Ji said. When the first section of the project opened in 2023, it’s a pity that he was not there on site. At that time, he made a wish to return to Bangladesh on the day the entire line opens. Now his dream has finally come true. When he stood once again at the familiar station and saw the jubilant local residents with sincere smiles on their faces, he felt that the past hardships had suddenly vanished. "I'm already looking forward to new projects in Bangladesh, and I hope I'll have the chance to come back and continue our relationship," he said.
