POWERCHINA completed drilling the Ban Sen No 2 Tunnel of the China-Laos Railway on Dec 27, seven months ahead of schedule.
This marks an important milestone in the construction of the railway, as the engineering work enters the completion phase, and the railing work and construction of the stations will start soon.
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The celebration ceremony for the drilling the Ban Sen No 2 Tunnel of the China-Laos Railway is held on Dec 27. [Photo/POWERCHINA] |
Li Zhigong, the consul general of the Consulate-General of China in Luang Prabang, said, Sinohydro 3 and Sinohydro 14, subsidiaries of POWERCHINA, have made great efforts in the construction of the railway, paying close attention to process management to ensure high quality and safety in construction.
In his speech, Ju Guojiang, president of China-Laos Railway Company, said 86 percent of the civil engineering aspects of the project has been completed. He said the builders will go all out to complete the remaining projects safely and efficiently to ensure that it will open to traffic in December 2021.
The Ban Sen No 2 Tunnel is located in an uninhabited area between Luang Prabang and Vientiane provinces in Laos and is 9,384 meters long. It is the longest tunnel on the railway.
Its location in virgin forests deep in the mountains created great difficulties in site construction and transport of equipment and materials.
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POWERCHINA completes drilling the Ban Sen No 2 Tunnel of the China-Laos Railway on Dec 27. [Photo/POWERCHINA] |
Sinohydro 3 and Sinohydro 14 adopted the "export + exit + horizontal hole + inclined well" four working areas in the same excavation mode for joint construction.
Since the start of construction March 15, 2017, POWECHINA has given full play to its resource advantages and engineering construction capabilities from more than 20 years of development in Laos.
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The celebration ceremony. [Photo/POWERCHINA] |
Its construction of the 246-meter-long Ban Sen No 2 Tunnel on the China-Laos Railway was bored in the record time of one month, laying a solid foundation for the completion of the tunnel.
The China-Laos Railway is a strategic docking project between the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Laos' strategy to develop from a landlocked country to a land-linked hub. The 414-km railway, with 198 km of tunnels and 62 km of bridges, will run from Boten border gate in northern Laos, bordering China, to Vientiane with an operating speed of 160 km per hour.
