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Construction of Xining-Golmud Section of Qinghai-Tibet Railway Speeded Up
The Xining-Golmud section of Qinghai-Tibet Railway winds its way from east to west through the "Roof of the World" Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The railway starts from the ancient plateau city of Xining in the east and ended in Golmud, the new city at the foot of Kunlun Mountain in the west. Early this year, with the implementation of the strategy for western region development, some 10,000 builders from eight railway construction units gathered here and started a large-scale construction of the project to enlarge the transportation capacity.
The 846 km-long Xining-Golmud railway line, started construction in 1958 section by section, was completed and opened to traffic in May 1984. It is the first phase project of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which was planned to be built from Xining to Lhasa. The greater part of the line with an elevation of over 3,000 meters is the first plateau railway of China. During the past 16 years, the freight volume transported through the railway totaled 114 million tons and the number of passengers 43 million person-times. Most of the major materials used in Tibet's development were transported to Tibet through this railway line, which is thus named as a line of unity, happiness and life by the people of all nationalities.
With the growth of the national economy and the ever-faster development of west China, the transporting capacity of the railway is far from enough to meet the demand. After careful examination and studies organized by Ministry of Railways, the State Development Planning Commission approved the feasibility studies report on enlarging the transport capacity of the Xining-Golmud section of Qinghai-Tibet Railway in November 1999. The project involves a total investment of 740 million yuan.
In order to ensure the quality and construction progress of the project, Lanzhou Railway Bureau, as the project construction unit, set up the project engineering headquarters early this year and assigned eight units including Lanzhou Railway Engineering Corporation for the construction. In May this year, the units entered their bid-winning sections and quickly unfolded all-round construction. Presently, the Xining Railway Bureau has replaced tracks on a 31.23 km section and 50688 pieces of sleepers. The renovation of the dangerous roadbeds and bridge culverts is also being stepped up. The 132-km communication project, which is undertaken by Electrfication Engineering Construction Bureau of China Railways, is to be finished by the end of this year.
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