First Electric Railway in Northeast China Open to Traffic


First Electric Railway in Northeast China Open to Traffic

The first electric railway in Northeast China, extending 564 kilometers to link Harbin and Shenyang, capitals of Heilongjiang and Liaoling provinces, opened to traffic Saturday.

The Harbin-Shenyang railway is part of an electric railway that connects Harbin with the coastal city of Dalian, a major infrastructure project to be completed in November this year.

The Harbin-Dalian railway runs some 946 kilometers and links 25 major cities in the three northeast China provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

Electrification of the railroad, originally built in 1898 by the Russians, started in 1994 and involves a total investment of some 15 billion yuan (1.81 billion U.S. dollars), which includes 360 million Deutsche marks of German loans.

German technologies and equipment on power supply have been integrated into the railroad renovation, which is designed to ease the transport bottleneck in northeast China and expand transportation there, said Lu Junsheng, deputy director of the Shenyang railroad administration.

With the electric railway, locomotive have a haulage capacity of 5,000 tons compared with 4,000 tons in the past, and trains can run at a maximum speed of 160 kilometers per hour, Lu said.

Experts believe as part of a modern logistic system in northeast China, the newly electrified railroad will help develop the regional economy and promote the reforms of the numerous state- owned enterprises in the region.

"Electrification of the railroad will facilitate trade between northeast China and Russia's Far East and boost economic cooperation between China and northeast Asian countries such as the Democratic Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan" said Tian Chunsheng, a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The Harbin-Dalian railway will also be connected in the south with a waterway linking Dalian and Yantai, a coastal city in Shandong province, east China, and extend to the coastal areas in southeast China.

Statistics show that China has 13,000 kilometers of electric railway, 24 percent of the total length of railways in operation across the country. As electric railway enables trains to run faster and cause less pollution to the environment than traditional ones that use diesel locomotives, China plans to add another 8,000 kilometers of electric railroad to its railway system in the coming five years.

 

9-20-2003

 

China's first passenger-only railway, linking Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, and Qinhuangdao, a port city in northern Hebei Province, began operation on Sunday.

The Qinhuangdao-Shenyang high-speed passenger-only railway, 404.64 kilometers long, was built at a cost of 15.7 billion yuan (1.9 billion US dollars) between August 1999 and June this year.

The double-line electrified rail route allows passenger trains to run at a speed of 200-250 kilometers per hour.

The new line is expected to relieve the burden on railway transport in north and northeast China, and to stimulate economic development in northeast China and areas along the Bohai Bay, said Liu Youmei, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Liu said the new railway will lay a foundation for the construction of more high-speed railways in China.

As the railway will eventually end at Beijing, the railway administration of China will change the name of the line to the "Beijing-Qinhuangdao-Shenyang Express Passage".

  Railroad