[photopress:dalianport.jpg,full,alignright]A freight train ferry now runs from Lushun in Dalian City (seen here), northeast China’s Liaoning Province, to Yantai, a port city in east China’s Shandong Province (seen below). This is the first railway transport across the Bohai Sea which is a horseshoe-shaped sea with an area of 77,000 sq km in north China.
[photopress:yantaimap.jpg,full,alignleft]The ferry, a roll-on roll-off vessel 182.6 meters in length and 24.8 meters wide, can carry a 50-car freight train, 50 twenty-ton trucks, 25 passenger cars and 480 passengers.
[photopress:yantai.jpg,full,alignright]The ferry is expected to reach Yantai in six hours. The new service cuts the trip from Yantai to Dalian by 1,800 km.
It seems certain of success as currently, more than 18 million tons of cargo and 7 million people travel between Dalian and Yantai a year.
This is the second marine ferry service in China and the longest. China’s first rail transport ferry sails the Qiongzhou Strait in south China, connecting Haikou on Hainan Island with Hai’an in Guangdong Province.
The ferry boat is driven by a special electrical propulsion system, the first time such a system has been used in China. Senior management of Sinorail Bohai Train Ferry say the system is more expensive than a diesel propulsion system but it can save 1,500 tons of fuel and 30 tons of lubricating oil every year.
The company said a second ferry boat of the same size and function will be put into use at the beginning of 2007, increasing its transport capacity to six million tons every year.
Source: People’s Daily Online