A railway, linking Neijiang of Sichuan Province and Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, was completed Wednesday morning.

Minister of Communication Fu Zhihuan and leading officials of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces attended a ceremony marking the completion of the project here Wednesday.

Construction of the 872-kilometer railway started in 1956, with the northern section from Neijiang to Anbian completed in 1960 and the southern section from Meihuashan of Guizhou to Kunming finished in 1965.

Construction of the 358-kilometer central section of the railway, from Yunnan's Shuifu County to Meihuashan, began in 1998. The railway is a main electric line in southwest China following the Chengdu-Kunming and Nanning-Kunming railways.

The central section runs through high mountains with elevations ranging from 300 meters to more than 2,200 meters. Bridges and tunnels account for 53.9 percent of the total length of the central section.

Linking the railways in northwest, central and south China, the Neijing-Kunming railway runs through 27 counties of the three provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou, and is expected to become a driving force behind economic development along the rail line.

(Xinhua 09/19/2001)