Collapses often occur during the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet railway tunnel, and the builders are desperate to carry out emergency repair work.
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On the train from Xining to Lhasa, the flight attendants celebrated with the passengers.
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Workers of China Railway Qinghai-Tibet Group Corporation exposed the snow to clean up the renovated track bed.
Photo by Ma Yijun
Scenery along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
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The National Railway Group must implement the main responsibility, the relevant units and the Sichuan-Tibet provinces must strengthen coordination and cooperation, and carefully organize the implementation. The majority of railway builders must carry forward the spirit of the “two roads” and the Qinghai-Tibet railway, scientific construction, safe construction, and green construction. Promote the construction of high-quality projects, and make new contributions to the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country.
——Excerpt from General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important instructions on the start of construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway in 2020
In 2020, General Secretary Xi Jinping gave important instructions to the construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, emphasizing that “the majority of railway builders must carry forward the spirit of the’two roads’ and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, scientific construction, safe construction, green construction, and high-quality advancement of project construction. Make new contributions to building a modern socialist country in an all-round way.”
Recalling the past, from the thunder-thundering crater of the wind, to the snowy Tanggula mountain peak in summer, from the three forks where the winds are raging, to the snowy river with the biting wind, more than 100,000 construction troops braved the severe cold and snow. Fight against hypoxia, overcome the three major global problems of “alpine hypoxia, permafrost, and ecological fragility”, and build the plateau railway with the highest altitude and longest line in the world, creating a “challenge to the limit and bravely create first-class” The spirit of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
Looking at the present, under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, the spirit of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is carried forward. The construction of the plateau railway is in full swing. The “Fuxing” EMU is in full swing. The operating mileage of railways in the Qinghai-Tibet provinces has expanded from 121 kilometers in 1959. By 2020, it will reach 3,656.98 kilometers, an increase of nearly 30 times, which will help the snow-covered plateau achieve rapid development.
Challenge the limit, the harder, the more forward
“The Qinghai-Tibet Railway needs to be repaired to Lhasa.” “It seems that the Qinghai-Tibet Railway must be built.” After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Party Central Committee has always been concerned about the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
In September 1958, the Xining-Golmud section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway started construction. However, due to the impact of three years of natural disasters, the country’s economic strength could not bear such a large-scale project, and the frozen soil and other problems were difficult to overcome at that time. In March 1961, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway project was forced to discontinue.
In March 1974, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway project was launched again. The 62,000 officers and men of the 7th and 10th Divisions of the Railway Corps went up to the plateau again to start the construction battle of the West Ge section. The Guanjiao Tunnel with a total length of 4.01 kilometers and an average elevation of 3,600 meters is the most difficult project in the Xige section. During the construction process, landslide disasters occurred frequently, and the lives of more than 100 young soldiers were permanently fixed in the corner. However, the railway soldiers used air guns, shovels, and hammers to compose a heroic chapter in the history of Qinghai-Tibet railway construction. The Sig Section was put into operation in 1984.
On June 29, 2001, the long-awaited Ge-Gela section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway started in Golmud and Lhasa at the same time, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was boiling! Colorful flags fluttered inside and outside the venue, gongs and drums were noisy, and people of all ethnic groups in festive costumes chanted “Long live the Communist Party” from the bottom of their hearts.
The 1142-kilometer Gera section is more difficult to construct than the Sige section. 960 kilometers are above 4000 meters above sea level, the annual average temperature is below 0 degrees Celsius, the extreme minimum temperature is minus 45 degrees Celsius, and the oxygen content of the air is less than 60% of the mainland. It is called the “life forbidden zone”. The builders may suffer from pulmonary edema and pulmonary edema at any time. Life-threatening altitude sickness such as cerebral edema.
The more difficult it is, the more spiritual support is needed. Remember the party Central Committee’s request, the pioneers are fighting against the sky and forever moving forward.
Hypoxia is not lacking in spirit, and every second counts for survey design. In the case of extreme hypoxia, the survey and design personnel of the China Railway First Survey and Design Institute often braved rain, snow and hail, and walked in potholes in grass and muddy swamps. At the peak of the mission in 2001, the Railway No. 1 Institute organized more than 1,700 people and 80 drilling rigs for field operations, drilling holes of 110,000 meters.
The wind and sand are stronger and the will is stronger, and the bridge erection guarantees the quality and quantity. In September 2002, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Laying Project Department of China Railway No. 1 Bureau, which erected beams on Kunlun Mountain, was suddenly hit by heavy rain. The wind and rain poured down, wrapped in hail, crackled on the helmet, and caused pain on the body. With tenacious perseverance and superb technology, the on-site personnel dropped the 140-ton bridge steadily on the pier to ensure zero accidents during the construction.
The pursuit of higher altitudes, the builders have passed on from generation to generation. At the Fenghuoshan Frozen Soil Observation Station, which is more than 4,900 meters above sea level, scientific researchers from China Railway Northwest Research Institute have held on for nearly half a century. Zhou Huaizhen, the first webmaster, took root for 22 years, and his fingers were frozen for life. Sun Jianmin, who was taken up the mountain by Zhou Huaizhen, walked more than 20 kilometers every day with an observation instrument weighing more than 20 kilograms, without a break for 30 years. The former party branch secretary Wang Zhanji was overworked and became sick. The 51-year-old left his last words: “I was alive and failed to see the Qinghai-Tibet Railway completed. It is the biggest regret of my life. After death, please bury my ashes on Fenghuoshan Mountain. I want to watch the train pass by me.” In 2001, Wang Zhanji’s son Wang Yaoxin signed up for Fenghuoshan and fulfilled his father’s last wish as a supervision engineer.
“The spirit of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was conceived in the dream-seeking practice of several generations of railway people. The lack of oxygen does not lack the spirit, the hardship is not afraid of hardship, the higher the altitude, the stronger the wind and the sand, the stronger the will, the more difficult it is, the more forward it is. The most precious spiritual quality of railway builders.” said Lu Chunfang, then commander of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Construction Headquarters.
Independent innovation to overcome many global problems
On October 6, 2005, the British “Guardian” long report “Railway Across the Roof of the World” contained a string of questions: “Tibet can’t build railways at all. There are 5000-meter-high mountains to climb over, 12 The kilometer-wide river valley needs to be bridged, and there are also ice, snow and soft mud that stretch for thousands of kilometers and cannot support the rails and trains. How could someone dig a tunnel in a low temperature of minus 30 degrees Celsius, or even a little effort in this one needs oxygen Where are the bottles and bridges and tracks?”
Sound siren is the best response. On July 1, 2006, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway from Xining to Lhasa was opened to traffic. The railway traverses 960 kilometers above 4000 meters above sea level, with the highest point being 5072 meters above sea level. Tanggula Mountain Station at 5,068 meters above sea level is the highest railway station in the world; The 4905-meter Fenghuoshan Tunnel is the highest permafrost tunnel in the world…
Behind this series of “world‘s best” is the Qinghai-Tibet Railway builders and operators, under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee, always insisting on independent innovation and courage to create first-class.
The high cold is a “blocker” in the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. At the Tanggula Yueling site, the highest point on the entire Qinghai-Tibet Railway, at an altitude of 5072 meters, Shao Yaoxia, deputy chief engineer and head of the Engineering Department of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Tanggula Construction Site of the 17th China Railway 17th Bureau, is the only woman and a member of the Communist Party. She once commanded the commandos to repair and construct the temporary bridge in the flood, and was almost swept away by the flood peak; she also solved the technical problem of cracks in the plateau prefabricated beam in the high-cold environment, and achieved 6 technological innovations. She was called “the smart star of the snowy plateau” by colleagues. .
Frozen soil is a worldwide problem in civil engineering. In order to conquer the 550-kilometer-long frozen soil layer, China Railway Northwest Scientific Research Institute took 45 years to measure more than 12 million data covering various meteorological conditions and ground temperature changes in the frozen soil area of the plateau, and condensed them into 29 major scientific and technological achievements. It laid the world‘s leading position in China’s frozen soil observation. The builders also used bridges instead of roads and hot rods to keep the frozen soil layer at a constant temperature, ensuring that the maximum settlement of the frozen soil section is controlled within 50 mm, and 96% of the roadbed has an annual settlement within 20 mm.
Lack of oxygen is the ultimate challenge for the construction and maintenance of plateau railways. In order to protect the 125-kilometer permafrost line with the worst natural conditions and the most disasters, the maintenance workers of the Wangkun line in the Golmud Engineering Section of China Railway Qinghai-Tibet Group Co., Ltd. must walk and measure nearly 10 kilometers a day in the “no man’s land” with an average altitude of 4,800 meters. , Bend over and get up more than 500 times. High cold and hypoxia often make everyone physically overstretched, but Yu Benfan, the secretary of the party branch of the maintenance workshop, said “our party members should do more”, and everyone is excited.
Ecology, a key word throughout the life cycle of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. During the construction and operation of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, it was the first time in China to implement a full-line environmental protection supervision system, set up a special wildlife migration channel for the first time, and created a world precedent for artificial wetlands in alpine meadows. At present, the green length along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has reached 805 kilometers and the green area is 7.75 million square meters, which is equivalent to the construction of 1085 standard football green fields. It is a veritable “green sky road”.
Do not forget the original intention and make new contributions to the new journey
During the National Day holiday, Barkhor Street in Lhasa was bustling with hustle and bustle. Witnessing the development of a small store of less than 30 square meters 15 years ago into a new store with spacious and well-decorated space today, the clerk Dan Zeng Zhuoma said: “A railway connects the close friendship of all ethnic groups, and everyone’s life is getting sweeter as it passes!”
In the 15 years since the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was opened to traffic, Tibet’s tourism industry has shown a “blowout” development. The number of tourists to Tibet in the region has increased from 1.8 million in 2005 to 35.05 million in 2020. The income from tourism in Tibet has increased from 1.94 billion in 2005. Yuan increased to 55.9 billion yuan in 2019. Relying on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, local specialty products such as industrial salt, potash fertilizer and soda ash can be quickly transported, and they will be transported to Belgium, Russia and other international markets on the China-Europe train.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to the construction of railways in the central and western regions, and has continuously increased its investment in the construction of railways in the central and western regions. Carrying forward the spirit of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the construction army has successively completed the Lhasa-Xigaze Railway, Dunhuang Railway, Geku Railway, Lhasa-Nyingchi Railway, and completed the expansion and reconstruction project of the Xinguanjiao Tunnel and Geermu Section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
On August 16, 2014, the Lhasa-Xigaze railway was opened to traffic, completely ending the situation of relying on roads for transportation in the southwestern part of Tibet. Over the past seven years of operation, this extension of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has sent a total of 8.328 million passengers, which has effectively promoted the prosperity of Tibet’s border trade.
On June 25 this year, the Lhasa-Nyingchi railway opened and the “Fuxing” plateau internal electric dual-source EMU was put into operation simultaneously. Tibet’s railway network has achieved a leap from the era of internal combustion to the era of electrification, and Tibet’s economic and social development is more confident.
Railway construction has a long way to go, and continuing to carry forward the spirit of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is the call of the times and the need for development. In 2020, General Secretary Xi Jinping issued important instructions to the construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, pointing out that the construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway is a major measure to implement the party’s strategy for governing Tibet in the new era. It is important for maintaining national unity, promoting ethnic unity, and consolidating border stability. It is of great significance to promote the economic and social development of the western region, especially Sichuan and Tibet.
Looking ahead to the development of railway construction in the Qinghai-Tibet provinces, a blueprint for plateau railways extending in all directions is slowly being rolled out. By 2025, the Lalin Railway has been in operation for 5 years, the Xining-Gelmud Railway has been upgraded for speed-up, and the Xining North-Sunjiazhai section of the railway rerouting project has been completed. The operating mileage of the railways in the two provinces will reach 4,059.98 kilometers.
“Standing on a new starting point, always uphold the original aspiration of’People’s Railway for the people’ and carry forward the spirit of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. The majority of railway builders will insist on scientific construction, safe construction, green construction, and high-quality advancement of project construction for the comprehensive construction of socialist modernization. The country has made new contributions.” said Lu Dongfu, secretary of the party group and chairman of the China National Railway Group Co., Ltd.