Wenzhou and Fuzhou close to being connected

[photopress:Wenzhou_home_town.jpg,full,alignright]The train system in China keeps extending. Now a ten-kilometer railway tunnel has been completed in Fujian Province. The railway runs beneath the Jimian Mountain inside the county of Lianjiang.The tunnel will be used for a new bullet train service that should start running this year.

Zhang Zongyan, chairman of the board of China Railways No.12 Bureau Group, said,'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.'

76% of the 300-km-long Wenzhou-Fuzhou railway is inside Fujian Province, and so far, 80% of the tunnels for the railway have been completed.

Construction started in Decmber 2005 and the services should be operating by June 2009, eight months ahead of schedule.

Plainly this was not an easy engineering feat which is probably why there has never been, until now, a railway between Wenzhou and Fuzhou. If you go by bus it takes sizx hours. The train journey will take two hours at the most. An amazing improvement.
Source: People's Daily Online