(The following article appeared at www.chinaview.cn on March 29.)
BEIJING, China — China’s first coal railway, Daqin Railway, started running 20,000-ton heavy-loading trains on Tuesday, marking a new breakthrough for the country’s railway freight transport.
Sources from the Chinese Ministry of Railways said a 204-box train loaded with 20,000 tons of coal and driven by five sets of China-made Shaoshan electrified engines, left Hudong station in North China’s Shanxi Province, and finally arrived in Qinhuangdao port in Hebei Province over 10 hours later.
Officials with the ministry said the journey marks a great breakthrough in China’s heavy-loading freight transport in the railway sector.
According to the ministry, more such trains will be added in the future in order to realize an annual transport target of 250 million tons as early as possible.
Known as China’s energy transportation artery, the Daqin Railway, linking Datong in Shanxi Province to Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province, is the country’s first railway designed exclusively for transporting coal.
At present most of the coal produced by Shanxi Province – the country’s coal base – is transported via the Daqin Railway, and then shipped to South China and abroad.
In recent years, however, coal transport was often delayed due to the shortfall of railway capacity and it was overstocked in Qinhuangdao port.
The designed transport capacity for the Daqin Railway was 100 million tons in 2002, but after technical improvement, the railway’s total capacity reached 150 million tons in 2004, and further rose to 200 million tons in 2005.
According to a national railway working conference held in Beijing last week, the high-speed passenger trains and heavy-loading and fast freight trains will be the future target for China’s railway train manufacturers.
China is now at a pivotal stage to upgrade its railway transport capacity and the government has issued China’s mid-term and long-term railway network scheme to accelerate railway construction in the coming years.