[photopress:logitstics_train_stop_in_Xiamen.jpg,full,alignright]Two new railway lines have been started in Fujian Province on the southeastern coast. When completed the will cut travel times between the coastal and inland areas.
One of the railways starts in Xiamen, a port city facing Taiwan, and runs 502.4 kilometers southwest along the coast to Shenzhen, boom city of southern Guangdong Province.
Upon its completion in 2011, the railway will allow trains to travel at up to 200 kilometers per hour, and a journey between the two cities will take less than three hours compared with the current 11.
The RMB41.7 billion (US$5.6 billion) construction cost will be shared by the Ministry of Railways, and the Fujian and Guangdong provincial governments.
The second major rail project is a 603.6-km railway linking Nanchang, capital of the central Jiangxi Province, with Fujian Province, with terminals in both Fuzhou and Putian.
The RMB51.8 billion railway will open to traffic in 2012, ‘the first modern railway’ to link Fujian Province with the hinterland, said Yu Kaiyang, director of the provincial railway construction office.
He said the new line will cut traveling distance between Fujian and Jiangxi by at least 17 km. The illustration brings to mind Edward Thomas and his splendid poem on Adlestrop:
Yes, I remember Adlestrop
The name because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontendly. It was late June.
With the new lines there will be express trains. They will not be pulling up un-wontedly.
Source: Window of China