It is reported that Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway will be 1,318 meters' long in total, and the designed train speed will reach 350 kilometer per hour. With a total investment of CNY 220.9 billion the construction will last for 5 years. This express railway will be the longest and most excellent one of its kind built without a break in the world. When the construction is completed, the trip between Beijing and Shanghai will only take less than 5 hours.

The construction of Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway was launched on April 18th 2008 and till now CNY 42 million of investment has been fulfilled. According to prediction, CNY 50 billion of investment will be fulfilled in the end of the year. Things are going on well in the project. By the end of Nov, construction of 1,203 kilometers had been launched, accounting for 91% of the total length.

The daily investment fulfillment of the project reaches CNY 200 million. Each day, Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway construction consumes 10,000 tonnes of steel bar, 35,000 tonnes of cement and 110,000 cubic meters' concrete. Now 113,000 people are working on the line, and 23,500 sets of equipments have arrived on the spots. The overall investment fulfillment of the year will surpass CNY 50 billion which was considered unimaginable in the past.

Such railway construction will be playing a remarkable role to promote the growth of China's national economy and relevant industries in the chain, and is of great significance to sectors of employment, raw material and equipment manufacturing. According to introduction, among China's newly-added CNY 100 billion of investment fund, CNY 15 billion will be poured into railway construction, and among the later, CNY 11.4 billion will be invested in the construction of Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway.

The total railway will consume 5 million tonnes of steel, which is equivalent to steel consumption of over 120 bird nests in Beijing, and all the steel is produced by domestic steel enterprises. The amount of steel consumption is huge mainly for the reason that there are lots of bridges along the line the combined length of bridges reaches 1,059 kilometers, accounting for 80.4% of the railway's total length. This is due to the reasons of geological conditions and the fact that bridges take up less field.

(Source: People's Daily)