Videos about railways, China

The new Wuhan-Guangzhou train service travels at an average speed of 217 miles per hour and covers the 660 miles between Wuhan and Guangzhou in just three hours. The journey previously took almost 11 hours.

The Harmony Express is just the first step of an epic £480 billion project to build nearly 19,000 miles of new railways in the next five years, 8,000 miles of which will be tracks for high-speed trains. The high speed train routes to be rolled out during this Year of the Tiger, and in the two years that follow, will dramatically shrink the country, spreading economic development to the countryside.

Aboard the Harmony Express, and at Wuhan's brand new £1.5 billion French-designed railway station, everything is spotless.

For some, it is one of the most visible signs of how far China has come. By 2012 the train, which runs from the central hub of Wuhan to the capital of China's manufacturing, Guangzhou, will extend all the way to Beijing, allowing passengers to zip from one end of China to the other in under eight hours.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7230137/China-steams-ahead-with-worlds-fastest-train.html

The new trains leave 29 times a day for Wuhan from a gargantuan train station on the outskirts of Guangzhou that opened on Jan. 30. With soaring steel girders, white walls and enormous skylights far overhead, the station, Asia’s largest, resembles a major airport.

The Wuhan-Guangzhou line cost $17 billion (116.6 billion renminbi); it has so many tunnels through mountains that at times it feels like a subway.

By 2012 China will have 3,000 miles of 215mph track (freeing normal rails for freight), whereas the US will have 84 miles of 186mph track, by 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/business/global/13rail.html?pagewanted=1