China has opened the 238-km stretch of the Sichuan-Qinghai railway after a remarkable 12 year of construction eventually connecting the West with a high speed train.
The local news agency Xinhua said the railway is now operational and will be the first to traverse the expansive territory predominantly inhabited by the Tibetan and Qiang ethnic groups.
It crosses the rugged, earthquake-prone plateau region to avoid disturbing the Giant Panda National Park in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.
A high-speed passenger train, C6008, departed around 11 a.m. from Maoxian County, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China’s Sichuan Province, for capital Chengdu. The railway section is designed to enable a 238-kilometer journey in just 55 minutes.
At an altitude of some 1,500 meters, Maoxian is the country’s largest area inhabited by the people of the Qiang ethnic group. They now have a new option of traveling by high-speed trains.
Yongqingtsu, the conductor of Tuesday’s train service, described the trip of about an hour as “smooth and comfortable.”
As the railway is built mostly in mountains, “more than half of the journey is in tunnels, which is like riding the subway,” he said, adding that the constant change in elevation also makes the trip like being on a super long escalator.
