Safety concerns as new railway sinks

A section of new railway in central Hebei Province that sank last week has railway workers and experts concerned about its safety.

Some 7.2 kilometers of track built on the Wuhan-Yichang Railway sank on March 9 after rain battered the area, maintenance workers at the scene said.

The rails and railroad ties in question have been removed from the site, which is in Haokou Town in Qianjiang City.

A worker said: "Last year, we reinforced part of the track and this time we are pinning up the whole subsiding section."

Sun Shengjie, deputy general manager of the China Railway 12th Bureau Group, responsible for construction of the line, said: "We discovered the problem during the evaluation phase. Up to 3 millimeters of sinkage a month is considered normal, but many points of the track had sunk by more than that."

Excessive sinking can lead to derailment, traffic engineering design experts said.

Workers said the area where the railway is once had a lake, but that it had dried up.

Building a viaduct can solve the problem, said Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

A contractor in the construction project said the original plan was to build a viaduct on this section but that it was changed into subgrade to save money.

A source with Huhanrong Railway Hubei Co Ltd, which owns the railway, denied this statement.

Sun said it is still not clear whether the design, the construction, or the construction supervision is at fault.

"We have invited experts to investigate the cause of the settlement," said Wang Zujian, director of the leadership office of Hubei provincial railway construction.

The Wuhan-Yichang Railway is an important part of the Huhanrong high-speed railway from Shanghai to Chengdu.

The line is expected to open in May and the sinking part has already undergone test runs.