Shanghai–Nantong railway

Hutong Railway
Hutong Railway under construction near Huangdu station, March 2016
Overview
Type	High-speed rail Heavy rail
Termini	Pingdong Huangdu
Stations	9
Technical
Line length	137.28 km (85.30 mi)
Number of tracks	2
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Operating speed	200 km/h (120 mph)
Signalling	Automatic block signaling
Maximum incline	0.6%
Route map ( Nanjing–Qidong railway towards Linchang) Pingdong ( Nanjing–Qidong railway towards Nantong East) Nantong West Hutong Yangtze River Bridge Zhangjiagang North Zhangjiagang Changshu Taicang Port Taicang ( Beijing–Shanghai railway towards Beijing) Anting West Anting Huangdu ( Beijing–Shanghai railway towards Shanghai)

Shanghai–Nantong railway, abbreviated as Hutong railway (Chinese: 沪通铁路; pinyin: Hù-Tōng tiělù, "Hu" and "Tong" being the abbreviations for Shanghai and Nantong, respectively) is a future railway in China's Yangtze River Delta area. It will connect the region's main city, Shanghai, located south of the Yangtze, with Nantong, north of the river.

Construction work on the railway began in March 2014, and is expected to take five and a half years.^[1]

The railway will be designed for running speeds of up to 200 km/h.^[1]

Routing

The railway will include 137 km of new tracks, from Pingdong Station (平东站) on the Nanjing–Qidong railway northwest of downtown Nantong to Huangdu railway station on the Beijing–Shanghai railway, in the northwestern part of Shanghai City. Anting being within 20 km from Shanghai railway station, the total railway distance from Nantong to Shanghai will be under 160 km. It is expected that the travel time between the two cities will be around 1 hour.^[1]

The railway will cross the Yangtze River over the new Hutong Yangtze River Bridge being constructed on the western outskirts of Nantong. This will be a double-deck bridge with a 4-track railway on the lower deck and a 6-lane roadway on the upper deck. It will be world's longest span (1092 metres) cable-stayed road-rail bridge. It will also have the highest (325 metres) piers of a cable-stayed road-rail bridge.^[2] This will be the easternmost railway crossing of the Yangtze. Presently, the closest railway crossing over the Yangtze is the freight-only rail ferry on the Xinyi–Changxing railway, between Jingjiang and Jiangyin, some 30 km upstream; the closest railway bridge is the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, over 200 km upstream. The new bridge thus will greatly improve the railway connections between the Central Jiangsu (the region north of the Yangtze) and the Jiangnan, in particular Shanghai.

On its way between the new bridge and Anting the railway will serve a number of communities on the southern bank of the Yangtze that presently lack railway service, such as Zhangjiagang, Changshu, and Taicang.^[1]

Update: April 2017, much of the large Hutong Yangtze river bridge, and the new line running from Anting west of Shanghai northwards to the river can be seen being constructed on the latest update of Google Maps. Noticeably many of the viaduct piers are in the ground with no viaduct on top of them just yet.

Notes