On 13/08/20 the China State Railway Group Co Ltd (China Railway) completed the 14.5km Duoji tunnel on the Kunming-Vientiane Railway to link China with Laos. In drilling the Duoji Tunnel, located in Mojiang county in Pu'er city, Southwest China's Yunnan province, construction workers tackled complicated geological conditions, such as the deformation of soft rocks and noxious gas, according to a project manager.
On 23/07/20 the 6.97km Houay Phoulai tunnel passing the Luang Prabang geological suture zone and multiple fault zones, has also now been completed. The tunnel, with a maximum depth of 645 m, goes through an unpopulated zone in northern Laos’ Oudomxay Province. Local harsh geological conditions made its construction highly difficult and risky. To overcome the difficulties and ensure the safety of the construction, the Chinese company had carried out real-time monitoring of gas and other toxic and harmful gases throughout the construction process, and adopted a variety of advanced geological forecasting methods, installed more pumping and drainage facilities, and used new technologies to prevent the tunnel from deformation.
On 21/06/20 the 8.84 km single-hole double-track tunnel, named Heping, which means peace in Chinese, was successfully drilled.
On 20/04/20 the 4.6km Jingkuan n.2 tunnel was completed. The tunnel of the Kunming-Wanzhou Railway on the Chinese side will be opened simultaneously with the Boten-Vientiane section in Laos by the end of 2021. And the 1,000 km cross-border railway will slash the travel time between the two countries to half a day.
The construction of the 1,000-km China-Laos railway line started in December 2016 and the line is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2021. The cross-border railway, a major project built under the Belt and Road Initiative, will slash the travel time between Kunming and Vientiane to half a day.
By the end of July 2020, all the subgrade earthwork, over 90 % of the bridges and over 95 % of the tunnels on the domestic section of the China-Laos Railway have now been completed, according to the China Railway. Click here for further information in the tunnelbuilder archive, and also visit http://www.crecg.com, http://english.www.gov.cn and https://www.cgtn.com/. 34/20.
