Between that time and the bridge's completion in 1957, railway cars travelling between northern and southern China had to be ferried over the Yangtze on barges, a laborious and dangerous practice.

Early formulations of plans for a railway bridge over the Yangtze at Wuhan were put forward by Zhang Zhidong in the late 19th century.

At the same time, Peking University President Yan Fu submitted the initial proposal for bridge construction to the Department of Transportation.

Although their work never proceeded past the planning phase, the area identified in the 1913 surveys proved to be an excellent site, and is the location where the bridge was eventually built.

Sun Yat-sen's treatise The International Development of China, published in 1919, emphasized the economic importance of finding a suitable location for building a bridge over or a tunnel under the Yangtze along the Wuhan railway line.

In February 1953, Mao Zedong traveled to Wuhan to receive reports on the project's progress, and was taken to the Yellow Crane Tower to view the proposed bridge site.

On 1 April 1953, Zhou Enlai approved the creation of the Wuhan Great Bridge Engineering Bureau, which was responsible for overseeing the design and building of the bridge, with Peng Min (Chinese: 彭敏) as bureau chief and party secretary and Wang Juqian (Chinese: 汪菊潜) as chief engineer.

Silin had predicted that using pressured-air caissons would be impractical due to the Yangtze's unpredictable water level, which made drilling holes for the bridge's supports much more difficult.