All aboard China’s newest high-speed rail service – from terracotta warrior world to giant panda country
Service to cut rail travel time between Xian and Chengdu from 11 hours to 3½ hours
A new 658km high-speed rail service will be up and running in western China on Wednesday, linking Xian, home of China’s famed terracotta warriors, to Chengdu in the heart of giant panda country.
With a top speed up to 250km/h, the new line took five years to build, winds through one of China’s most mountainous areas and will cut the rail journey between the two cities from about 11 hours to 3½ hours, according to Xinhua.
The new line will not be the fastest in China but it will form a key part of the country’s national high-speed railway system, linking the upstream areas of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers via 127 bridges and 34 tunnels.
Ticket sales started on Sunday, with a second-class ticket for the full journey costing 263 yuan (US$40), the report said.
In about a decade, China’s high-speed railway network went from zero to 22,000km at the end of last year, becoming the biggest of its kind in the world.
China plans to have 30,000km of high-speed rail in operation by 2020, linking 80 per cent of its major cities.
