On October 9, 2026, as the Lanzhou Zhangye high-speed railway began laying long tracks in Shandan County, the Wuwei Zhangye section of the Lanzhou Zhangye high-speed railway entered the track laying stage

The Lanzhou Zhangjiakou high-speed railway starts from Lanzhou West Station, passes through Lanzhou City, Wuwei City, Jinchang City, and Zhangye City in Gansu Province, and connects to Zhangye West Station. The total length of the main line is about 498 kilometers, with a designed speed of 250 kilometers per hour.

The Lanzhou Zhangjiakou High speed Railway is an important component of the national eight vertical and eight horizontal high-speed railway network's land bridge passage. Currently, the main line under construction from Wuwei to Zhangye has a total length of about 244 kilometers, connecting cities and counties such as Wuwei, Jinchang, Shandan, and Zhangye in the Hexi Corridor.

The construction unit has invested in TCM60 track laying units equipped with Beidou navigation, new long rail traction vehicles, and intelligent mobile flash welding machines, as well as supporting rail engineering transportation management intelligent control platforms, to ensure the safe, high-quality and steady progress of track laying construction.

This track laying innovation adopts the duplex method for parallel operation in different sections. The main line uses the single sleeper continuous method to lay 500 meters of track at once, while the other sections synchronously promote the dragging method for loading ballast and placing sleepers on the ballasted track. The two sets of construction methods are interspersed in parallel, greatly improving the efficiency of track laying construction.

After the completion of this section, the Lanzhou Zhangzhou high-speed railway will be fully connected, forming a "dual channel" of Lanzhou Xinjiang and Lanzhou Zhangzhou high-speed railways from Lanzhou to Zhangye. Jinchang will end its history of not being connected to high-speed railways, while effectively releasing the bulk freight capacity of the Lanzhou Xinjiang high-speed railway. This is of great significance for improving the layout of the northwest high-speed railway network, promoting the integration of culture and tourism along the line, and facilitating the circulation of resource elements, and promoting high-quality economic and social development in the Hexi Corridor.Editor/Gong Ziwei