Kings Cross to Beijing in two days on new high-speed rail network

By Malcolm Moore, in Shanghai 1000PM GMT 08 March 2010

China is in negotiations to set up a high-speed rail network to India and Europe with trains that able of utilizing at over 200mph inside of the subsequent ten years Photo MARTIN POPE

China is in negotiations to set up a high-speed rail network to India and Europe with trains that able of utilizing at over 200mph inside of the subsequent ten years.

The network would in the future lift passengers from London to Beijing and afterwards to Singapore. It would additionally run to India and Pakistan, according to Wang Mengshu, a piece of of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a comparison expert on China"s made at home high-speed rail project.

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A second plan would see trains streamer north by Russia to Germany and in to the European railway system, and a third line will magnify south to bond Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia.

Passengers could house a sight in London and step off in Beijing, 5,070 miles afar as the bluster flies, in usually dual days. They could go on to Singapore, 6,750 miles away, inside of 3 days.

"We are aiming for the trains to run rounded off as fast as aeroplanes," pronounced Mr Wang. "The most appropriate box unfolding is that the 3 networks will be finished in a decade," he added.

Mr Wang pronounced that China was already in negotiations with seventeen countries over the rail lines, that will pull together and open up the total of Central, East and South East Asia. Mr Wang pronounced the network would additionally concede China to ride profitable cargoes of tender materials some-more efficiently.

"It was not China that pushed the thought to proceed with," pronounced Mr Wang. "It was the alternative countries that came to us, generally India. These countries cannot entirely exercise the construction a whole of a high-speed rail network and they hoped to pull on the experience and technology," he said.

China is in the center of a �480 billion made at home railway enlargement plan that aims to set up scarcely 19,000 miles of new railways in the subsequent five years, joining up all of the vital cities with high-speed lines.

The world"s fastest train, the Harmony Express that has a tip speed of scarcely 250mph, was denounced at the finish of last year, in between the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou. Wholly Chinese-built, but utilizing record from Siemens and Kawasaki, the Harmony Express can cover 660 miles, the homogeneous of a tour from London to Edinburgh and back, in usually 3 hours.

Mr Wang pronounced the lane of the 3 lines had nonetheless to be decided, but that construction a whole for the South East Asian line had already started in the southern range of Yunnan and that Burma was about to proceed construction the link. China has offering to stake the Burmese line in sell for the country"s abounding pot of lithium, a steel at large used in batteries.

Currently, the usually rail line that links China to South East Middle East is an superannuated lane built by the French in Vietnam a century ago. The Asian Development Bank has not long ago concluded a second �27 million loan as piece of the �93 reformation of Cambodia"s network, that should finish by 2013. The cost of the lines from Cambodia to Singapore and afterwards from Vietnam to China could be rounded off �400 million.

"We have additionally already carried out the prospecting and consult work for the European network, and Central and Eastern European countries are penetrating for us to start," Mr Wang said. "The Northern network will be the third one to start, nonetheless China and Russia have already concluded on a high-speed line opposite Siberia, where one million Chinese already live."

One stumbling retard is China"s enterprise for the high-speed marks to run on the same sign as China"s made at home network. Vietnam has concluded to shift the customary gauge, but alternative countries are still in negotiations.

"From the point of view, the greatest issue is money," pronounced Mr Wang.

"We will have use of supervision income and bank loans, but the railways might additionally lift financing from the in isolation zone and additionally from the host countries. We would essentially cite the alternative countries to compensate in healthy resources rather than have their own collateral investment."

As for passengers, Mr Wang likely that in a decade"s time, visa restrictions on ride by Middle East "will be serve lifted".