Heavy haul railways boost China's economy

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By CGTN's Yang Wentao and Zhu Qinliang

Faced with high energy consumption, congestion and smog, China has been exploring other ways of moving people and freight – railways. China's railway network, which is 120,000 kilometers long, accounts for 7% of the world’s total. The advantages are particularly obvious when it comes to freight transport.

An S-shaped railway bend lies 100 kilometers north of Beijing, passed by coal trains everyday, coming from Datong, Shanxi, the coal capital of China.

The 653-km-long Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway, one of the major rails to transport coal from west to east China. /CGTN Photo

Coal is considered one of the most important energy sources in China. Despite the fact that the energy structure has changed significantly, coal still accounts for 66% of the country’s energy consumption. The Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway is 653 kilometers long and handles a quarter of the country’s coal transport. It is like an artery pumping blood into eastern China.

In 2002, the capacity of the Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway hit 100 million tons and it later rose to 400 million tons after been upgraded.

In order to move such a volume on a single line, each train needs to be loaded to its absolute maximum. The Datong-Qinhuangdao line uses 20,000–ton heavy duty trains, each can carry as much coal as 4,000 trucks which have the capacity of five-ton trucks.

A heavy haul train. /CGTN Photo

The coal is loaded onto ships after transported to the coast at Qinhuangdao, a port city of China in northeastern Hebei Province, the terminal.

China is planning for something more ambitious, a north–south heavy haul railway which is three times the length of the Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway.

283km