High-speed rail linking Guiyang, Nanning to open in 2023

The aerial view of the construction site of the Guiyang-Nanning High-speed Railway. [Photo by Jiang Xuelin/China News Service]

The 482-kilometer Guiyang-Nanning High-speed Railway, which will offer a direct link between the capital cities of Guizhou province and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, started track laying on Aug 16.

The railway runs through northwest Guangxi and southeast Guizhou. It contains 193 bridges and 108 tunnels. A total of 964 km of tracks will be laid on its main line, of which 564 km will be in Guangxi. The track laying of the railway's Hechi-Nanning section will be first completed and the whole Guangxi section will finish track laying by the end of this year.

Advanced all-in-one machines for multi-line track-laying are being used in the construction so that the tracks for both sides can be laid at the same time, increasing the track laying efficiency by 50 percent. Of note, it is the first time for such a technique to be used in Guangxi's railway construction.

The Guiyang-Nanning High-speed Railway is an important part of China's "Eight Horizontal & Eight Vertical" high-speed railway network and is the first high-speed railway with a designed speed of 350 km per hour in Guangxi. 

Once it starts operations at the end of 2023, the travel time between Nanning and Guiyang will be shortened from the current over five hours to around two hours, making contributions to the deep integration of transportation, logistics, commerce, trade, as well as industry between Guizhou and Guangxi.