On the morning of December 26, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Changde-Yiyang-Changsha High-Speed Railway, designed by the Fourth Railway Survey and Design Institute (FSDI), and the full-line opening ceremony of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Intercity Railway were held at Changsha West Station.

The Changde-Yiyang-Changsha Railway is an important component of the national “Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal” high-speed railway network, specifically of the two major corridors from Xiamen to Chongqing and from Hohhot to Nanning. It is a key part of forming a high-speed rail loop in Hunan Province. The line starts from Changde City in the west, passes through Yiyang City, and connects to Changsha West Station, with a total length of 156.82 kilometers and a construction period of 4 years. It has five stations: Changde, Hanshou South, Yiyang South, Ningxiang West, and Changsha West. The technical standard is a newly built 350 km/h passenger dedicated line. Upon completion, the project will achieve the goal of high-speed rail access in all 14 cities and prefectures of Hunan Province, and together with the Chongqing-Guizhou, Guizhou-Zhangjiajie-Changde, and Changsha-Ganzhou railways, it will form the most convenient passenger corridor between the Sichuan-Chongqing region and the Hunan-Jiangxi-Fujian region, connecting the West Coast of the Taiwan Strait, Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomerations.

The Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Intercity Railway, designed by FSDI and constructed with the participation of the 20th Bureau Group, has a total length of 105 kilometers and is the first intercity railway in Hunan Province. Construction began in June 2010. In December 2016, the section from Changsha Railway Station south to Zhuzhou and Xiangtan was completed and opened. With the full-line opening of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Intercity Railway today, the number of operating stations has increased from 16 to 23, with seven new stations: Kaifusi, Guanshaling, Bafangshan, Gushan, Jianshan, Lugu, and Changsha West. The number of EMU trains has increased from 5 to 8, and the daily number of train pairs has increased from 29 to 34. The travel time between Changsha and Zhuzhou, and between Changsha and Xiangtan, will be basically controlled within 90 minutes.

Li Hongmei, deputy chief engineer of the Electrification Department of FSDI, introduced that after five years of original innovation, FSDI led relevant units in joint research and development and application. The international first use of high-power converter technology solved the technical difficulty of trains passing through electrical phase breaks on steep gradients in tunnels. This laid a solid foundation for the opening of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Intercity Railway and provided a demonstration for the electrification design of other intercity railways in China.