Railway Has Driven the Economy of Southwest China for 70 Years

Chongqing- Crossing the Sichuan Basin, stretching from Chengdu in the west to Chongqing along the north bank of the Yangtze River over 70 years, the railway is 505 kilometers long. It includes 62 stations built by the Chinese independently after founding the People's Republic of China in 1952. This is the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway.

As early as the great military marched forward the southwest of China, before the liberation of all of China, Liu Bocheng, a Chinese Communist military commander and Marshal of the People's Liberation Army, and Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese leader, decided to build the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway.

Three Reasons for Building Chengdu-Chongqing Railway

Deng offered three reasons for the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway. First and foremost, Sichuan's traffic was so blocked that the smooth implementation of the central leadership's decrees in this area couldn't be ensured without the railway.

Second, both Chongqing and Chengdu are central cities in southwest China. The railway construction would promote the prosperity of multiple industries in Sichuan and even the whole southwestern areas of China, where Sichuan could transfer food like high-quality rice, pork, poultry, eggs, and non-staple food to other districts in China for exchange.

Third, the Chinese people had never designed or built a railway alone. If the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway takes the lead, it would not only enhance China's reputation but also enable factories of different sizes to place sufficient orders and speed up industrial development.

In February 1950, at Deng's proposal, the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway was the first step to promoting the development of all industries and helping Sichuan's economy recover. Thus, the Southwest Military and Political Committee dispatched the southwest military region troops to work on the railway construction.

Using local materials was a principle determined by the CPC Central Committee. Before the construction, the leaders and people in charge proposed that inexpensive stone materials were used as much as possible and that reinforced concrete should be reduced.

Furthermore, the large and medium-sized bridges must be made from steel beams, while the rest of the pier, foundation, and small and medium-sized arch bridges and culverts are as far as possible to use the stone produced along the line.

The Railway Dream of the People in Southwest China

In March 1950, Southwest Railway Engineering Bureau was founded at Jialing village in Chongqing. In April of the same year, the first batch of engineers left for the railway line, relaunching railway reconnaissance based on the departmental standard issued by the Ministry of Railways.

In June 1950, the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway was officially started. In June 1952, this project was finally completed. Since then, the railway dream of people in southwestern areas, which had lasted for nearly a half-century, eventually became a reality.

In December 1987, after years of hard construction, the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway's electrification project was finally completed and met national acceptance standards.

The total length of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway is 505 kilometers, with 42.13 million cubic meters of earth and stone, including 43 tunnels, seven bridges, 77 middles bridges, 353 small bridges, 1195 culverts and canals, 7115.71 kilometers of electric wires, and 230,000 square meters of diverse houses.

As the National Grade Ⅰ passenger and freight railway that connects Sichuan province and Chongqing in China, the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway was designed and constructed by China itself entirely with domestic materials, serving as a pioneer in the history of Chinese railway and has important significance.

(Zheng Yixiao, as an intern, also contributed to this report.)