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 ...

in Gansu, 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 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- Wuwei section of the Lanzhou–Xinjiang Railway, 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 transc ...

, 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 f ...

on the East China Sea 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 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 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 other names, is the capital of Shaanxi Province. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong Plain, the city is the third most populous city in Western China, after Chongqi ...

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