Construction has entered the key
phase on the Tanggula Station, which at 5,068 meters above the sea
level is the highest in the world, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway
Project Headquarters said in Amdo, Tibet
on Wednesday.
Twenty-nine reinforced concrete
pillars are being erected in holes dug in frozen earth to support
the station, said Zhang Lianyou, chief engineer of the
Qinghai-Tibet Railway Project Headquarters under the Railways No.19
Bureau Group.
The station, on the southern face of
the Tanggula Mountain range in southwest Tibet, is part of the
Qinghai-Tibet railway and is due to be completed by August.
It is expected to become a tourist
attraction and will have three lines for both passenger and freight
purposes, and when finished, the station will have a floor space of
about 384.2 square meters, Zhang said.
The station will operate as a
railway junction control center since it's located in the middle of
the highest section of the railway in the Tanggula Range, 4,916
meters above sea level, Zhang said.
The 1,142-km railway will run from
Gelmud in Qinghai Province to Lhasa, capital of the Tibet
Autonomous Region on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, becoming the
longest railway at the highest elevation in the world.
The central government decided to
build the railway in 2001, allocating 26.2 billion yuan (US$ 3.1
billion) for the project. The line is scheduled to reach Lhasa this
year and start trial operation in the second half of 2006.
(Xinhua News Agency July 29,
2005)