A ten-kilometer railway tunnel has been completed in southeast China's Fujian Province for a new bullet train service that will be put into operation in 2008.
The railway runs beneath the Jimian Mountain inside the county of Lianjiang.
"The Jimian Mountain Tunnel is one of the 53 tunnels required to be completed for the construction of a railway connecting Wenzhou, a port city in east China's Zhejiang Province, and Fuzhou, capital of Fujian," said Zhang Zongyan, chairman of the board of China Railways No. 12 Bureau Group Corp.
According to Zhang, 76 percent of the 300-km-long Wenzhou-Fuzhou railway is inside Fujian Province, and so far, 80 percent of the tunnels for the railway have been completed.
It is expected that the Wenzhou-Fuzhou railway will be finished and put into service in June 2009, eight months ahead of schedule. Construction began in December 2005.
Currently, there is no railway service between Wenzhou and Fuzhou. It takes about six hours for a single journey between the two cities by bus. But when the projected railway is completed and put into service, a single journey between the two cities by train will only take about two hours at most, according to Zhang.
(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2007)
