WUHAN, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Tracks started to be laid on Sunday in Yangxin County in central China's Hubei Province for a high-speed railway linking Wuhan, the provincial capital, and Jiujiang City in Jiangxi Province.

The 198-kilometer line will be put into operation in the first half of 2017, linking Hubei's Wuhan, Ezhou, Huangshi, and Yangxin and Jiujiang.

With 19.4 billion yuan (2.95 billion U.S. dollars) of investment, the project broke ground in 2014 and is designed to support trains at a speed of 250 kilometers per hour.

When completed, it will take an hour to travel between Wuhan and Jiujiang, instead of about three hours by train at present.