The Tibetan Plateau is a "natural barrier". In order to strengthen the transport links between the hinterland of the Tibetan Plateau and the hinterland, China has been increasing its investment in transport infrastructure that directly connects the Tibetan Plateau. At present, the Lanqing-Qinghai-Tibet Railway, Dunge Railway, Geku Railway, Lanxin Passenger Dedicated, La-Ri Railway, Lalin Railway and other transportation arteries have been built, and the railways under construction include Yunnan-Tibet Railway, Sichuan-Tibet Railway (Yalin Section), Sichuan-Qingdao Railway, etc. In addition, it is also planned to build the Xin-Tibet Railway, the "Second Qinghai-Tibet Railway", the Chengge Railway and other "heavenly roads". This will further strengthen the connection between the Tibetan Plateau and the mainland, and provide strong support for the passage through the South Asian subcontinent and even the Indian Ocean. Recently,With a total investment of more than 14.8 billion yuan, the electrification project of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Golmud-Lhasa section) has been accelerated, and it is expected to start construction, which will further strengthen military defense and security, and the traction locomotives of the Tibet train will no longer be controlled by others.
We are no strangers to the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. The railway is one of the four major projects in China's new century (Qinghai-Tibet Railway, West-to-East Gas Transmission, West-to-East Power Transmission, South-to-North Water Diversion), and is also the first railway into Tibet, the line starts from Xining, Qinghai in the east, passes through Golmud, enters ** from Tanggula Pass, passes through Naqu and other places, and ends in Lhasa, with a total length of about 1956 kilometers, a total of 85 stations, is the world's highest altitude, the longest line of the plateau railway, from the start of construction to the opening of the whole line lasted 48 years!
Among them, the section from Xining to Golmud is about 814 kilometers long, which started construction in 1958 and was not put into operation until 1985. The 1,142-kilometer-long section from Golmud to Lhasa started construction at the end of June 2001 and was put into operation on July 1, 2006, with a total investment of about 33 billion yuan. After the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was completed and opened to traffic, it was backed by the Lanqing Railway and connected to the national railway network, becoming the main channel for national key materials to enter Tibet. In 2023, the number of passengers entering and leaving Tibet through the Qinghai-Tibet Railway will reach 29590,000 person-times, a record high; Since its opening, it has transported about 35 million passengers in and out of Tibet!
Since the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway in 2006, the number of trains has been increasing, and the problems of aging equipment and insufficient capacity of existing lines have become increasingly prominent, so it is inevitable to expand and transform the capacity. As early as 2007, the construction of the double line began and was completed and electrified at the end of June 2011, with a maximum speed of 160 kilometers per hour. In June 2023, the quality improvement project of the Xige section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway will be completed; On July 1, the Fuxing EMU officially ran in the Xige section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
The reconstruction of the section from Golmud to Lhasa is more difficultNot only are the climatic and geological conditions along the line complex, but the line is longer and the investment scale is larger. Since 2010, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has started the track change project, which was not completed until September 2016. In March 2016, the total investment was about 37The 7.8 billion yuan Gela section expansion and renovation project started construction and was completed in August 2018, adding 13 new stations and increasing transportation capacity by 80%, but the design speed is still 100 kilometers per hour, which is still a non-electrified railway.
The good news is that the electrification project of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Gela Section) is in full swing. The project requires the electrification of the railway with a total length of about 1,136 kilometers, and at the same time needs to extend the length of the departure line of 32 stations to 850 meters, and transform the passenger facilities of 3 stations such as Amdo, Nagqu and Dangxiong to meet the needs of EMU docking, with a total investment of about 148400 million yuan (** paragraph about 72.)0.6 billion yuan), the planned construction period is 3 years, and the original plan was to start construction in June 2022, but it was postponed for some reason. It is reported that the electrification transformation project of Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Gela Section) has been shortlisted for the national "Medium and Long-term Railway Network Planning" and the "14th Five-Year Plan" national key railway construction project; In addition, according to the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the medium and long-term railway network plan, the project will start construction during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
The electrification transformation of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Gela Section) is of great significance. After the completion of the project, it can not only improve the transportation capacity and transportation security level, but also improve the quality of the regional transportation road network, reduce transportation costs, improve the technical level of the regional road network, realize the leapfrog development of the railway, greatly enhance the "hematopoietic" function of Tibetan areas, help the balanced development of the national high-speed railway, and strengthen the connection with the mainland, provide strong support for the South Asian subcontinent and even the Indian Ocean, and maintain military and national defense security.
First, the Fuxing EMU will cross the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the situation in which the locomotive is controlled by others will no longer exist. As China's railways enter the era of high-speed rail, China's high-speed rail has formed a complete industrial chain and a complete technical system, especially the high-speed rail technology has realized the transformation from the stage of absorption and reference to the stage of independent innovation, such as the early Harmony EMU CRH1, CRH2, CRH3, CRH5, etc. are all imported from abroad, and later independently developed the CRH380 series EMU, and now has independent intellectual property rights, in the forefront of the world Fuxing EMU (CR EMU), All of them are the embodiment of China's high-speed rail technological progress. At present, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau on the Lalin Railway, the La-Ri Railway, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Xige Section) has opened the "Fuxing" EMU, once the Golmud-Lhasa section of the electrification transformation is completed, the Fuxing EMU will cross the Tanggula Mountain, across the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau!
This means that the traction locomotives of the Tibetan train will no longer be controlled by people. At present, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Gela section), whether it is a passenger car or a train, mainly relies on NJ2 diesel locomotive traction. To put it bluntly, due to the special geographical and climatic conditions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, coupled with the non-electric electrified railway and domestic diesel locomotive technology, the train from the mainland to ** needs to be pulled by the NJ2 locomotive in Golmud in order to cross the Tanggula Mountain and enter the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. However, the NJ2 locomotive was designed and manufactured by General Electric Company of the United States, which is specially designed for the traction of the Gela section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and all the existing 78 NJ2 locomotives are equipped with the Golmud locomotive depot! The good news is that according to the main technical standards of the Gela section electrification transformation project, after the completion of the project, China's CR EMUs and HXD series locomotives will directly cross the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and reach the **!
Second, the capacity of the railway passage into Tibet will be greatly improved, providing strong support for the maintenance of military and national defense security. At present, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Gela section) is a Class I, single-line, non-electrified railway, with a maximum traction mass of 2780t for two machines and 3580t for three machines, and an effective length of 720 meters (some 900 meters) to the starting line. However, after the completion of the electrification transformation, the traction mode is changed to electric traction, and the maximum traction mass directly reaches 4000t, which is about 44% higher than the maximum traction mass of the original double machine and about 12% higher than the maximum traction quality of the original three machines, both the transportation capacity and transportation cost will be greatly reduced, and the effective length to the starting line will also be built in accordance with the 850m series. The forward term of passenger and freight vehicles can also reach 205 against the sun, far exceeding the current level.
In the future, after the completion of the Sichuan-Tibet, Yunnan-Tibet and other railway arteries, a more reasonable division of labor will be formed with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Among them, the Sichuan-Tibet Railway will greatly reduce the time and space distance between Lhasa and the main economically developed areas, and the time from Lhasa to Chengdu will be compressed to about 12 hours, which will provide strong support for the frontline function. The Yunnan-Tibet Railway is the first to form the nearest passage to the sea, forming the main artery of "Yunnan-Tibet Railway - Yunnan-Guizhou Railway Nankun Railway - Nanguang High-speed Railway Guangxi Coastal High-speed Railway (Railway)", directly reaching Guangxi Beibu Gulf and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. At that time, the Qinghai-Tibet railway will become an important energy channel into Tibet, after all, China's oil and gas resources are mainly concentrated in the central and western regions, which can be transported nearby to ensure the energy security of the frontier positions.
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