First half-kilometer steel track for China-Laos railway the fruit of BRI

By：xinhua Update：2020-04-02

A 500-meter-long steel track was laid on Friday in Vientiane, capital of Laos. It is the first section of the China-Laos railway to be installed and is the longest steel rail outside of China in Asia.

The installation of the first section kicked off the track laying work of the strategic project which is the fruit of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Laos' strategy of converting from a landlocked country to a land-linked hub.

It was the first time a CYP500 track laying machine was used in railway construction in Southeast Asia. The ma-chine can lay two kilometers of tracks each day and operate 24 hours a day, and was able to meet the construction schedule of 1.5 kilometers per day.

Electrical engineering, signal engineering and railroad station work will also be undertaken.

From December 2016 to the end of 2019, the project saw the completion of multiple tough tasks, including the construction of bridges and tunnels.

In November 2019, a high-risk, bottleneck tunnel project was completed by the China Railway No. 8 Engineering Group. With a length of 4,585 meters, it is the second-longest tunnel on the sparsely inhabited peninsula.

Overall construction is proceeding smoothly amid the coronavirus pandemic and is on track with its target completion date of December 2021.

The 414-kilometer China-Laos railway links the Mohan-Boten border gate in northern Laos and Vientiane. Operating speed on the route is designed to be 160 kilo-meters per hour.