The Northwest Railway Network is about to undergo a critical upgrade in 2026. With the release of the list of major construction projects in Gansu Province, the expansion and renovation projects of the Ejina Hami section of the Linha Railway in Gansu Province and the Lanzhou section of the Longhai Railway have officially emerged.

This is not only a hard core iteration of infrastructure, but also the strategic end result of the country's west to east coal transport and the the Belt and Road Initiative in the northwest hinterland. Against the backdrop of tight transportation capacity on the Lanzhou Xinjiang Railway, the renovation of these two main lines will directly determine the efficiency ceiling of the northwest bulk material outflow and the China Europe South Railway corridor.

Linha Railway breaks through the bottleneck of coal transportation from Xinjiang to other regions

As a key channel for the transportation of coal from the west to the east in China, the Gansu section of the Linha Railway expansion and renovation project is planned to be fully launched in 2026. The total length of the project is 640.17 kilometers, with the Gansu section as the core control project. The reconstruction plan is highly targeted: the 435.78km Ejina wutong water section will be built with a second line and electrified 10000 ton reconstruction will be implemented; The 204.3 km east section of wutong River to Hami will be electrified for single track and the 10000 ton condition will be reserved.

This is not a simple expansion of the route, but a leap in the level of transportation capacity. After completion, the railway will be upgraded from a single track internal combustion engine to a national railway level I double track electrified heavy-duty railway with a designed speed of 120 kilometers per hour. For Gansu, this Black Gold Avenue will directly connect the mineral and chemical resource rich areas in the Hexi Corridor, and is expected to significantly reduce logistics costs for enterprises along the route.

More importantly, it will build three major capacity channels in the northern wing of Xinjiang, along with the Lanxin Railway and the Jiangnao Railway, completely alleviating the current dilemma of difficulty in finding a railway for coal transportation from Xinjiang and strengthening Gansu's position as an energy hub in the northwest.

The Longhai Railway connects the throat of China Europe freight trains

If the Linha Railway solves the problem of transporting more, the Lanzhou section of the Longhai Railway expansion and renovation project focuses on running faster. This project directly targets the bottleneck pain point of the Tianshui Lanzhou section of the Longhai Railway, involving the realignment of five key sections including Tianshui to Nanhechuan and Weinan Town to Xinyang Town, with a total length of 35.56 kilometers of single track reconstruction.

At present, the feasibility study of the project has been jointly approved by China Railway Group and Gansu Province. The construction drawing review and bidding will be completed in September 2025. In 2026, the focus will be on promoting land acquisition, demolition, and main works in the Lanzhou section. Unlike large-scale construction, this renovation is more like a precision surgical procedure aimed at eliminating the slope and curve limitations of existing lines by straightening and adding a second line through cutting and straightening.

This is crucial to improving the capacity of the new Eurasian Continental Bridge corridor - after the transformation, the running speed and number of China Europe trains in this section will be significantly improved, striving for a more core node status for Gansu in the the Belt and Road international intermodal transport. Keywords: transportation, freight logistics

From the heavy load of tens of thousands of tons on the Linha Railway to the precise dismantling of trucks on the Longhai Railway, Gansu is using the surgery of two railways to bring vitality to the entire network. This is not only a necessary measure to fill the gaps in the northwest railway network, but also a strategic first step to ensure energy security and supply chain autonomy and controllability in the context of great power competition. With the roar of pile drivers in 2026, the pulse of the Northwest Iron and Steel artery will become even stronger.Editor/Cheng Liting