Railway now rings China's largest desert

The last section of a 2,712-kilometer rail loop around China's largest desert, the Taklimakan, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, went into operation yesterday.

The loop was completed after the new Hotan-Ruoqiang line was linked with the Ruoqiang-Korla section of the Golmud-Korla line and the Korla-Kashgar and Kashgar-Hotan sections of the southern Xinjiang line.

The Hotan-Ruoqiang railroad stretches east from Hotan City to Ruoqiang county along the southern edge of the Taklimakan, the world's second-largest shifting-sand desert. Its construction started in 2018.

The new line extends 825 kilometers with a designed speed of 120 km/h. It has 22 stations, with 11 offering passenger service and six cargo service. Trains can cover the entire distance in 11 hours and 26 minutes.

The line runs through the southern edge of the Taklimakan, where sandstorms are a serious threat. So anti-desertification programs went on simultaneously with railway construction.

Five viaducts with a length of 49.7 km lift the railway to protect it against sandstorms, 50 million square meters of grass grids have been laid and 13 million trees including rose willow and sea buckthorn planted.