A high-speed railway in western China has won the FIDIC Outstanding Project of the Year award, its design company said on Thursday.

The 658-km-long railway that links Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, and Chengdu City, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, opened to traffic in 2017.

The railway, running through the Qinling Mountains, a natural boundary between the country's north and south, helps cut the travel time between the cities to three hours from 16 hours. It can transport a maximum of 100,000 passengers per day.

The award is praised as the Nobel Prize of the engineering industry, which is given by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC).

(Top image via VCG)