The Wushaoling Tunnel () is a 21.05 km dual-bore railway

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

, north-west China. The east-bound bore opened on 30 March 2006. The second bore opened in August 2006. It was briefly the longest railway tunnel in China until the opening of the 27.84 km

Taihang Tunnel Taihang Tunnel () is the third-longest mountain railway tunnel in northern China, after the New Guanjiao and West Qinling tunnels. It is a double track tunnel that was built to allow the Shijiazhuang–Taiyuan high-speed railway to cross the T ...

in late 2007. In 2018, a one year reconstruction of the signaling system was started. In 2019, construction of a parallel tunnel started, to carry the Lanzhou-Zhangye high speed railway.

Location

Located on the

Lanzhou Lanzhou (, ; ) is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. Located on the banks of the Yellow River, it is a key regional transportation hub, connecting areas further west by rail to the eastern half of the country. H ...

- Wuwei section of the

Lanzhou–Xinjiang Railway The Lanzhou−Xinjiang railway or Lanxin railway (), is the longest railway in Northwestern China. It runs 1904 kilometres (1,183 miles) from Lanzhou, Gansu, through the Hexi Corridor, to Ürümqi, in Xinjiang. It was Xinjiang's only rail link wi ...

, the tunnel has reduced the distance between Dachaigou and Longgou by 30.4 km. Key to the

Eurasian Land Bridge The Eurasian Land Bridge (), sometimes called the New Silk Road (, ), is the rail transport route for moving freight and passengers overland between Pacific seaports in the Russian Far East and China and seaports in Europe. The route, a transco ...

, the tunnel is part of the 3,651 km section linking

Lianyungang Lianyungang () is a prefecture-level city in northeastern Jiangsu province, China. It borders Yancheng to its southeast, Huai'an and Suqian to its south, Xuzhou to its southwest, and the province of Shandong to its north. Its name derives from ...

on the

East China Sea The East China Sea is an arm of the Western Pacific Ocean, located directly offshore from East China. It covers an area of roughly . The sea’s northern extension between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula is the Yellow Sea, separated b ...

coast with

Ürümqi Ürümqi ( ; also spelled Ürümchi or without umlauts), formerly known as Dihua (also spelled Tihwa), is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of the People's Republic of China. Ürümqi developed its ...

in Northwest China. Administratively, the tunnel is located within two county-level units of Wuwei Prefecture-level City. The eastern (actually, southeastern) portal is in Bairi Tibetan Autonomous County (a.k.a. Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County); the western (actually, northwestern) portal, in

Gulang County Gulang County () is a county in central Gansu province, the People's Republic of China, bordering Inner Mongolia to the northeast. It is under the administration of Wuwei City. Its postal code is 733100, and its population in 2006 was 393,200 peo ...

Infrastructure

The tunnel consists of two bores with centres separated by 40 m. It is designed to allow speeds of 160 km/h. The tunnel travels through complex geology, involving four regional fault zones and soft rock. The

New Austrian Tunnelling method The New Austrian tunneling method (NATM), also known as the sequential excavation method (SEM) or sprayed concrete lining method (SCL), is a method of modern tunnel design and construction employing sophisticated monitoring to optimize various wa ...

was adopted as the construction technique. An elliptical cross-section (horseshoe shape) was used for the majority of the tunnel, with a circular section used in the geologically challenging Fault Zone No. 7. The right (east-bound) bore was constructed first, while the left tunnel was a parallel drift with smaller diameter to be enlarged later. The gradient is mainly 1.1%. The Wuwei portal has an altitude of 2447 m, and the Lanzhou portal 2663 m. The maximum depth of the tunnel is 1100 m. On 26 June 2003

Interfax Interfax (russian: Интерфакс) is a Russian news agency. The agency is owned by Interfax News Agency joint-stock company and is headquartered in Moscow. History As the first non-governmental channel of political and economic informatio ...

reported that the total investment for the project was ¥ 7 billion ($845 million), that the project commenced construction in November 2002 and that it was scheduled to take six and a half years to complete. Also reported was that Chinese steel manufacturer Lingyuan Iron and Steel (Linggang) would provide 4,360 tons of steel products for the tunnel project.

Incident

On 26 July 2009, a locomotive taking a train on the way from

Xi'an Xi'an ( , ; ; Chinese: ), frequently spelled as Xian and also known by #Name, other names, is the list of capitals in China, capital of Shaanxi, Shaanxi Province. A Sub-provincial division#Sub-provincial municipalities, sub-provincial city o ...

caught fire in the left tunnel, about 300 meters from a tunnel portal. Over 1,700 passengers were evacuated, with injuries limited to some smoke inhalation.

Coordinates

*Lanzhou portal (east): , north of Dachaigou Town in Bairi Tibetan Autonomous County *Wuwei portal (west): {{coord, 37.2970, 102.8998, south of Heisongyi Town in

References

Railway tunnels in China Transport in Gansu Tunnels completed in 2006 Buildings and structures in Gansu