On September 10, the exit of the Xingshandong Tunnel on the Yichang-Xingshan High-Speed Railway, part of the Yichang-Wanzhou High-Speed Railway connector line in Hubei, was successfully holed through, marking that construction of the Xingshandong Tunnel has entered a substantive stage and laying the foundation for the full breakthrough of the Yichang-Xingshan Railway.

The exit inclined shaft of the Xingshandong Tunnel on the Yichang-Xingshan High-Speed Railway has been successfully holed through.

The Yichang-Xingshan High-Speed Railway is a project under the 13th Five-Year Plan and an important component of the Yangtze River passenger transport corridor. With a total length of 109 kilometers and a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour, it starts at Yichang East Station, passes through Yiling District and Xingshan County, and connects to the Zhengzhou-Wanzhou High-Speed Railway. It is expected to be completed and opened to traffic by the end of 2025.

According to reports, the Xingshandong Tunnel has a total length of 16,883.5 meters, and its main line passes through seven fault fracture zones, making construction highly difficult. The contractor adopted prestressed anchor cables for active support and proposed a construction method combining "prestressed anchor cables + steel strips + steel arches," which improved the overall stability and load-bearing capacity of the support structure.

It is reported that after the Yichang-Xingshan High-Speed Railway is completed and opened to traffic, it will join with the Wanzhou-Xingshan section of the Zhengzhou-Wanzhou Railway to form a new eastbound high-speed rail corridor for the Sichuan-Chongqing region, connecting the existing Shanghai-Wuhan-Chengdu Railway and the newly built Zhengzhou-Wanzhou High-Speed Railway. By then, the high-speed rail travel time from Chongqing to Yichang will be reduced from the current more than 4 hours to less than 2 hours, and from Chengdu to Yichang from about 6.5 hours to about 4 hours.