Han Ximin

ximhan@126.com

A NEW high-speed rail linking Jiangmen and Zhanjiang in western Guangdong will be put into operation soon.

The new link is part of the 470-kilometer Shenzhen-Zhanjiang High-speed Railway and is expected to begin service by the end of June. Once the service opens, the trips from Shenzhen and Guangzhou to Zhanjiang will be cut to three hours and 57 minutes and three hours, respectively, a test run organized for reporters by Shenzhen North Railway Station showed yesterday.

Currently, it takes 11 hours and 35 minutes to travel from Shenzhen to Zhanjiang by train.

It is designed to run at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, according to Guangzhou Railway Group Corp.

Though the exact date it will open is still awaiting approval from China Railway Corp., Guo Fei, deputy chief with Jiangmen Project Construction Headquarters of Guangzhou Railway Group Corp., said in an interview Thursday that general tests and checks on the engineering of the rail, rail base, tunnels, bridges, power, telecommunications and signal system have been completed.

The 355-kilometer Jiangmen-Zhanjiang high-speed rail starts at Xinhui Railway Station in Jiangmen, an interchange station with the Guangzhou-Zhuhai Intercity Railway, and stretches westward passing 11 stations in Jiangmen, Yangjiang, Maoming, and ending at Zhanjiang West Railway Station.

Jiangmen Station is expected to be the fourth-largest railway hub in the province, following Guangzhou South Station, Shenzhen North Station and Foshan West Station. It will be an interchange station of the Shenzhen-Zhanjiang railway, the Guangzhou-Zhuhai railway, the Guangzhou-Zhuhai Intercity Railway and the Guangzhou-Foshan-Jiangmen-Zhuhai intercity railway.

“The long anticipated line will bring western Guangdong residents closer to the Pearl River Delta. Advanced facilities, such as ticket dispensers and a facial recognition system, will be used at all of the railway stations,” said Liu Hui, spokeswoman of Guangzhou South Railway Station.

“By the final stage of the test run, all of the operations employees and 80 percent of the service employees had been working at the stations along the line since April,” said Liu.

According to a schedule that was released by DT-News, a news app of Shenzhen Special Zone Daily, 14 pairs of trains will run between Zhanjiang West Station and Foshan, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The report said the service will start June 28.

Train D7554/1 from Shenzhen will operate every Thursday and Friday, and train D7752/3 from Zhanjiang to Shenzhen will operate every Tuesday and Thursday.

The Jiangmen-Zhanjiang high-speed rail is part of the 470-kilometer Shenzhen-Zhanjiang High-speed Railway. It consists of the Shenzhen-Maoming and the Maoming-Zhanjiang sections. Construction of the Shenzhen-Maoming section was undertaken in two phases. Construction of the Shenzhen-Jiangmen section is still under way.