On July 6, the ballastless track works of the Weiya Tunnel—the first tunnel on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway Second Double-Track Line entering Xinjiang—officially began in-tunnel construction. This marks that the track works on the Xinjiang section of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway Second Double-Track Line have fully entered the critical stage, and the Xinjiang section is expected to start laying steel rails on September 1.

It is understood that conventional railways lay sleepers on a bed of small stones and then lay steel rails, and such lines are not suitable for high-speed train operation. As the development direction of high-speed railway engineering technology, ballastless track is currently an advanced track bed technology in China, offering many advantages such as low maintenance workload, simple structure, strong integrity, high line load capacity, high vehicle stability and long service life.

The Xinjiang section of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway Second Double-Track Line uses monolithic ballastless track beds throughout, which is also the first large-scale application of ballastless track in Xinjiang. Since September last year, the ballastless track laying works on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Second Double-Track Line have been fully rolled out and have now entered the critical stage.

The Weiya Tunnel is located in the heart of the desert and gobi in Hami Prefecture, 8 kilometers west of Weiya Railway Station in Hami City. It is the first tunnel on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway Second Double-Track Line from the interior into Xinjiang and is also an important node project. It is being constructed by the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Second Double-Track Line Project Department of China Railway 20th Bureau Group.

The tunnel has a total length of 943 meters, including 594 meters of blind tunnel, with a maximum ground cover depth of 21 meters and a minimum of 5.7 meters. In addition, because the Weiya Tunnel is located in the Yandun wind area, with more than 150 days per year of gale-force winds of level 8 or above and a long freezing period, the construction conditions are complex. This tunnel is also known as Xinjiang's first high-risk shallow-buried tunnel.

A relevant person in charge of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Second Double-Track Line Project Department of China Railway 20th Bureau Group said that around the 15th, the ballastless track construction in the tunnel is expected to be successfully completed.

The 1,776-kilometer Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway Second Double-Track Line began construction in November 2009 and is currently the high-speed railway with the longest mileage under construction at one time in the world. The line starts from Lanzhou West Station, passes through Xining in Qinghai, Zhangye, Jiuquan and Jiayuguan in Gansu, and Hami and Turpan in Xinjiang, and leads into Urumqi Station. The planned construction period is 5 years, and the entire line is scheduled to open to traffic in 2014.