CCTV — The Xi’an-Chengdu high-speed railway (HSR), traveling through the Qinling Mountains with a projected speed of 250 kilometers per hour, started its maiden trial run in full length on Wednesday.
The first bullet train departed from Xi’an north station on Wednesday morning, embarking on its first round trip between Xi’an, provincial capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi, and Chengdu, provincial capital of southwest China’s Sichuan. Prior to this full-length test, a series of tests on different sections of the high-speed rail line have been conducted.
The railroad is 643 kilometers long, including tunnels with a total length of 189 kilometers and bridges of 131 kilometers in total length. Thanks to mature construction technologies of high bridges and long tunnels as well as the enormous improvement of gradeability, constructors of the rail have overcome numerous difficulties caused by the highly complicated geology and terrain throughout the Qinling Mountains. The railway will shorten the single journey time between Chengdu and Xi’an from 16 hours to 3 hours.
To protect the ecological environment in the Qinling Mountains and Sichuan Province, home to a number of endangered wildlife species like pandas and snub-nosed monkeys, the railway circumvented nature reserves and water conservation areas to retain the original ecology.
The passenger railway was also designed to boost the economic development of cities and regions along the line by connecting Xi’an, Ankang, Hanzhong, Guangyuan, Chengdu and a variety of other cities and counties. Most of all, it has a station at Shaanxi’s impoverished county of Foping, ending its train-free history and driving the development of its agriculture and tourism.
The fast track will adopt a set of China’s indigenous bullet trains that run at 250 kilometers per hour.