World's highest and fastest train

Construction is underway of the world's highest high-speed passenger railway, the 1,776-kilometer second line of Lanxin Railway, which will be completed in 2015.

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DEEP in the Qilian Mountains in northwest China, early spring arrives with heavy snow and freezing temperatures. In this desolate spot in Qinghai Province, at an altitude of 3,700 meters above sea level, migrant worker Li Bingui is seldom separated from his jackhammer, which makes his whole body shudder as he breaks apart bedrock.

Li, along with more than 1,800 other workers, are at the mercy of a brutal environment as they construct the world's highest high-speed passenger railway. It's also controversial because of extremely high cost and what is expected to be low ridership because of high ticket costs.

The workers are carving out a 9,490-meter-long tunnel through the rugged mountain range, one of the most difficult segments of the line to link Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province, with Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The 1,776-kilometer second line of Lanxin Railway runs across Gansu and Qinghai provinces to Xinjiang, traversing the wind-ravaged Gobi Desert.

Started in late 2009 and scheduled to be completed in 2015, the line is designed for trains traveling at up to 300 kilometers per hour, much faster than the current 120 kilometers per hour on the existing line - cutting travel time between Lanzhou and Urumqi to about six hours.

Ren Shaoqiang, chief engineer with the China Railway 20th Group Co Ltd that in charge of the construction, says that compared with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the existing line between Lanzhou and Urumqi, construction of this fast-rail line is more challenging.

"Take the tunnel project, for example. There's no precedent to draw from," says Ren, who also played a significant role in building the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the highest rail link in the world. "We have to make innovations, just as we did on the Fenghuoshan Tunnel of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway."

In the past year or so, engineers have worked with researchers from several Chinese universities on natural disaster forecasting, water discharge, and measuring of wall rock transfiguration, among other things.

Other worries are more immediately pressing, such as the lack of oxygen in the air because of the high altitude, which poses health threat to workers.

Zhang Hong, a director at the site, says natural oxygen content in the tunnel is only around 65 percent of that in low-lying areas.

And, from October to June, the mountain is frequently covered by ice and snow.

Construction worker Wu Xuelin says working on the site is far more stressful than working on similar projects in coastal areas like in Shandong Province or Shanghai.

"I could not adapt well to the altitude at the beginning, suffering headaches, nausea, and I had difficulties sleeping," Wu says.

The company has improved safety measures, providing workers with oxygen tanks and setting up rooms at cave exits where workers can inhale oxygen. It has also built oxygen-generating stations to provide more oxygen in the tunnel.

Live video surveillance and alarm systems have been set up.

"We only need to switch on a computer and log in to our accounts to know what's happening in the tunnel, even if we are thousands of kilometers away," Ren says. "We can also remotely control operations."

"Under such conditions, nobody can stand a high workload for a long time," says Guo Yuhong, secretary of the Communist Party of China and Union Committee for the Qilian Mountains Tunnel.

Guo, 44, has been stationed at the construction site since last year, and his hair has turned gray during that period of time.

Costly, controversial

According to Ren, building the line through difficult terrain like in the Qilian Mountains requires twice as much investment compared with similar high-speed line construction on low-level flat areas.

Workers' wages has been doubled, he says.

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