The Laos-China Railway Company (LCRC) says the ultimate tunnel of the 414km railway project has been bored, marking the top of the impressive, large-scale engineering work required on the road.
The milestone was reached yesterday when engineers accomplished the Xiang Ngeun Tunnel No. 3 in Luang Prabang province, about 210 km north of Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
The line consists of a complete of 75 tunnels, which means that you can traverse roughly 120 km of mountains and forests. Many of those are large civil projects in themselves.
In June this 12 months, China Railway Guangzhou Engineering Group accomplished the 9.3 km-long Ban Nakok Tunnel after greater than two years of drilling through 4 fault zones and implementing “scientific and technological innovations” (see further reading).
An even longer tunnel, 15.2 km long, was dug in China’s Yunnan province by the seventeenth Bureau Group of China Railway.
The extreme nature of the project is reflected within the proven fact that the road may have 198 km of tunnels and 62 km of bridges, greater than half the length of the road.
Xinhua news agency comments that the completion of the tunnel and bridges on this line signifies that the rest of the work might be spent constructing stations, laying tracks and establishing control systems.
So far, roughly 148 km of tracks have been laid and the primary station in Nateuy has been topped out.
China Railway Construction Group began work on Vientiane Station, the biggest of the road’s 20 stops, in early July.
Laos’ 414km electrified railway will run from Boten Station on the China-Laos border to Vientiane, with goods and passengers traveling at a speed of 160km/h.
The project cost is estimated at $6 billion, or roughly one-third of Laos’ GDP.
About $3.6 billion is in the shape of a loan to Laos from the Export-Import Bank of China, while the remaining $2.4 billion was provided by LCRC, which is 70% Chinese-owned.
Laos also invested $250 million from its state budget.
Ultimately, the railway will constitute a connection inside certainly one of the flagship projects of China’s One Belt and One Road initiative: an electrified standard-gauge line from China to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Work on the project began in December 2016, and trains are scheduled to start out running in December 2021.
