PRC China bullet train track collapsed

[singveld]

China railway workers repair 'collapsed' new line

A newly built section of a high-speed rail line has collapsed in China's central Hubei province following heavy rain, state media reports.

The line was set to open in May and had been in use for test runs.

About 300m of the embankment in Qianjiang city collapsed last Friday, Xinhua news agency says. News of the incident only emerged on Monday.

China has embarked on an ambitious project to expand its high-speed rail network across the country.

But this is just the latest incident to tarnish the reputation of the new network, says the BBC's Michael Bristow in Beijing.

The collapsed embankment is part of the Hanyi High Speed Railway, which links the provincial capital Wuhan with Yichang to the west.

Hundreds of workers have been sent to the site to repair the damage. Photos from a local newspaper show workers removing rails and sleepers from the scene.

Heavy rain apparently caused the foundations to give way on the railway line, which forms part of the trunk route of the national high-speed network.

But one report from the local official news portal says the owner of the railway has rebuked initial local reports, saying they are "untrue".

"It is part of the process to rectify quality problems spotted on the embankment in pre-launch tests," the railway company claims.

Some internet users in China, however, are not convinced by the explanation. They ask if there are any flaws in the construction process.

On microblogging site Sina Weibo, a user from Yichang said: "Thank goodness that it collapsed early enough, or it would be yet another tragedy if it happened after launch."

Another user, from Wuhan, said: "I was longing for a more convenient journey home, now I'd better have no expectations."

China's leaders have praised rail network plans, but it has not been free from controversy, our correspondent says.

Forty people died last summer in a crash on a rapid train line in eastern Zhejiang province and the entire high speed scheme has been dogged with reports of corruption.

 

[singveld]

A 300-metre stretch of high-speed rail track near Wuhan collapsed on Friday due to “persistent rain”, according to Xinhua.

The Hanyi High-speed Railway, which links the provincial capital Wuhan and Yichang city, is expected to open in May. The collapsed part has already undergone test runs.

The roadbed of a 300-meter section rail in Qianjiang city collapsed Friday afternoon. Workers working the section said heavy rain in the past few days may have caused the problem.

The collapse came just days after a contractor on the rail line was accused of cutting corners in construction, and then distorting a supposedly independent quality assessment. From Global Times, via Seeing Red in China:

A Time Weekly report said Thursday that CGGC’s earth supplier Ni Hongjun reported to the authorities in 2010 that CGGC employees replaced at least 90,000 cubic meters of spall [crushed rock] with earth for personal benefit, causing serious safety risks for high-speed trains and passengers.

However, a “third-party” inspection report released in September 2011 by the Civil Engineering Testing Center of Central South University said, under the influence of CGGC, that the project was “qualified”. The report prevented the authorities and the public from knowing the truth ….

The Wuhan-Yichang high-speed railway runs in Central China’s Hubei Province, an area prone to flooding caused by the Yangtze River and its tributaries. Replacing spall with earth for the project amounts to building a house on the foundation of cake, the source said.

 

[singveld]

China High-Speed Railway Section Collapses After Heavy Rains




March 12 (Bloomberg) -- A section of an unopened high-speed railway collapsed in central China's Hubei province following heavy rains, renewing safety concerns prompted by a fatal crash last year.

Hundreds of workers have been sent to make repairs to the 300-meter (984-foot) roadbed after the March 9 failure in Qianjiang city, the official Xinhua News Agency said today, citing local authorities. The stretch, which had undergone test runs, is part of a line due to open in May.

China Railway Construction Corp., which built the section, according to Xinhua, and China Railway Group Ltd. both plunged the most this year in Hong Kong on speculation the incident may deter the government from pushing ahead with a 2.8 trillion yuan ($443 billion) building plan. Construction was slowed last year after 40 people were killed in a high-speed crash in July.

"The collapse has hit the market's confidence in the sector," said Gary Wong, an analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co. in Hong Kong. "The ministry assured people that major railway incidents wouldn't happen again."

The failed line is part of the 291-kilometer (181-mile) long Hanyi High-Speed Railway, linking the provincial capital Wuhan and Yichang city, according to Xinhua. The owner of the line, Hu Han Rong Railway Hubei Co. denied the incident, according to cnhubei.com, a state-backed local news portal.


Soil Report


Earlier this month, Time Weekly, a Guangdong-based weekly newspaper, said another section of grading on the same line had been built with earth instead of rocks. The builder of that section, China Gezhouba Group Co., and Hu Han Rong said no problems were found in inspections, according to the official People's Daily. No phone number was listed for Hu Han Rong, a venture between the rail ministry and the local government, on its website or with directory assistance.

China Gezhouba on March 3 said the quality of its work on the Hanyi railway "is good."

China last year fired rail officials after parts of a 2.3 billion-yuan construction project in northeastern Jilin province were illegally subcontracted to unqualified builders including a former cook, People's Daily reported in November. The illegal builders used shoddy materials.

"These are systematic problems," said Vivian Liu, a Shanghai-based analyst with Sinopac Securities Asia Ltd. "The regulatory inspections are nowhere near enough."


Shares Slide


The railway ministry didn't reply to questions sent by fax. The government information office in Wuhan, Hubei referred media inquiries to websites. No information was posted there.

Calls to Beijing-based China Railway Construction went unanswered. The section was built by China Railway 12th Bureau Group Co., according to Xinhua. That's a unit of China Railway Construction, according to the company's interim report.

The railway builder fell 7.3 percent to close at HK$5.31 as of 4 p.m. in Hong Kong, the most since Oct. 31. China Railway Group dropped 5.4 percent to close at HK$2.83, the most since Dec. 28. Trainmaker CSR Corp. fell 4.1 percent to HK$5.42.

China is already scaling back rail-expansion plans. The ministry plans to cut construction spending to 400 billion yuan this year, state-run China Daily said Dec. 24, citing Railway Minister Sheng Guangzu. That compares with 461 billion yuan in 2011 and 707 billion yuan in 2010, according to ministry figures.

The rail system is due to reach 120,000 kilometers by 2015, under the nation's latest five-year plan. That includes boosting the high-speed network, which opened in 2007, to 16,000 kilometers.

In the July crash, near Wenzhou, a train was partly pushed off a viaduct by another locomotive after a lightning strike caused signaling equipment to malfunction. Three officials in the local rail bureau were fired within days of the incident. After a longer investigation, more than 50 others were punished and the government pledged to fix design flaws.