A pair of 500-meter steel rails were successfully laid on a concrete bed at the Putian Railway Station in southeast China's Fujian Province on Thursday, marking the beginning of track-laying work on the country's first sea-crossing high-speed railway.

With a length of 277 kilometers, the Fuzhou-Xiamen high-speed railway links the provincial capital of Fuzhou with the port city of Xiamen. With a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour, it is expected to slash the travel time between the two cities to within one hour.

Using an advanced machine, workers are able to lay the left and right tracks at the same time and nearly double their efficiency, said Zhang Xiaofeng, a project manager with China Railway 11th Bureau Group Co., Ltd.

At the current pace of about six km of track laid per day, the entire track-laying work is expected to finish by the end of this year, according to Zhang Zhipeng, an executive with Dongnan Coastal Railway Fujian Co., Ltd.

The railway construction project is slated for completion in 2023.

(Cover: The Fuzhou-Xiamen high-speed railway is China's first sea-crossing high-speed railway. /CFP)