Railway’s two largest stations under construction

Workers are currently preparing the ground for the construction of the two largest stations on the Laos-China railway – one near the Chinese border and the other at the end of the line in Vientiane.
An employee on the Laos-China Railway Construction Project, who asked not to be named, told Vientiane Times on Wednesday that the station in Vientiane is the largest and has both passenger and freight sections.
“Vientiane is the largest station on the line and the second largest station is at the Chinese border in Luang Namtha province, in the north of Laos,” he said.

In the future, the railway will extend south from Vientiane through Thailand and Malaysia, ending at Singapore which has a large port where sea freight is unloaded and dispatched. 
The actual site of the station in Vientiane has not been disclosed, but many people are eagerly waiting for it to be built and the railway to become operational so they can get a seat on a train, travel to the provinces and also visit China.    
A Chinese railway engineer, Mr Hu Bin, relayed the latest developments of the railway to Lao and Chinese media personnel when speaking at the Vientiane beam field recently.
The railway runs on an elevated track for a distance of 63 kilometres through Vientiane. So far four kilometres of concrete beams have been placed atop pillars to connect with the train station.
The concrete beams can be produced at the rate of four a day at the Vientiane beam field in Naxaithong district, and their placement on top of the supporting pillars is expected to be complete by the end of this year. 
Most high-speed rail overpasses are built in cities but here in Vientiane farmers will be able to grow crops under the elevated railway and people can continue to use the roads in their villages.
At the Chinese border, the so-called Friendship Tunnel is the largest of the many tunnels along the route and runs for a distance of 7,000 metres in China and for 2,000 metres in Laos. The railway then slices through western Laos to Vientiane via the provinces of Oudomxay, Luang Prabang and Vientiane.
After going through the 9,000-metre long Friendship Tunnel across the border, trains will reach the second largest station at Boten, the official border crossing between Laos and China in Luang Namtha province and about 1 kilometre from the tunnel.
This is the first station on the southbound 414-km line, which will be able to carry about 5,000 passengers per day as well as freight.
Construction of the station is still at ground level on a 20-hectare site.
To date, more than 13 billion yuan has been invested in the project. Some 87 percent of bed road construction work is now complete, 54 percent of the tunnels (13 tunnels) have been built, and 43 percent of all bridges are finished.
The US$5.986 billion (37.4 billion yuan) railway is set for completion in 2021.

By Khonesavanh Latsaphao
(Latest Update April 27, 2019)