China Going Up and Coming Down

SoCalChris writes "The BBC writes that China has just completed the world's highest railroad, climbing to 16,640 feet (5,072 meters) above sea level. The cars will be sealed to help passengers cope with the pressure changes from the altitude. The line is expected to begin carrying passengers next year." This news comes at the same time that their Chinese taikonauts return from their spaceflight after just 115 hours in orbit.

Comments

YYYYEEEEAAAARRRGHH!!!

[soapdog]

World biggest roller coaster?

The Asian Century

[JymBrittain]

While we [the /. crowd] bitch and moan about Microsoft and while the great herd worry more about Britney's spawn than credible science, more about the latest American Idol than engineering and while China and India graduate more scientists and engineers than the US...you can expect many, many more reports like this. The 21st century just may be when the Sino-Communist brand of capitalism eclipses lAmerican power and influence.

Re:Real shame...

[nihilogos]

with expanded access to new goods and services, educational opportunities, and contact with the outside world

All of the above could have been accomplished without destroying a millenium of scholastic and artistic works. Not to speak of the execution and incarceration of its living representatives.

Real shame that the standard of living in Tibet has risen steadily from the subsistence level ever since the CCP took control, huh?

For the Chinese immigrants. The native population are treated as second class citizens. Hundreds of thousands died of starvation when collectivism was first introduced, and most survivors suffer from various disabilities caused by malnutrition.

You idiot, Matt Drudge is not a reporter

[michaeltoe]

The images on Xinhua are meant to demonstrate the capsule landing. They're not pretending to be actual photos. You should know better than to trust headlines with a question mark at the end of them.

Re:Safety?

[QuasiEvil]

I would assume that, like other rail systems that operate in harsh climates, there are backup systems. Figure when BC Rail built their all-electric Tumbler Ridge line, they included a small diesel engine in each locomotive in case the overhead power failed so that the crew wouldn't freeze to death (winters in the Tumbler Ridge area are absolutely brutally cold). While the Qinghai-Tibet Rwy isn't electrified, there just have to be backups for such things. In this case, supplemental heat and bottled oxygen would be the two I'd worry about. Based on what I've read, the average elevation of the line is something like 13,000 feet, which is still perfectly breathable, especially to those accustomed to thin air. (I live at about 7,000, and spend weeks during the summer above 10000-11000.) It's only going to be on the high passes that you have issues with air. I'm guessing that it's not built to Western-type standards of redundancy (because, after all, this still is *China*, who was still running mainline steam locomotives until this year), but I'm sure they have something in case of failures. Figure each coach probably has its own systems, so if one fails, you pile everybody into the working coaches. My guess is that they'll probably get away from the Chinese way of one locomotive per train as well - anything running in those nasty conditions, I'd want at least two units in case one died somewhere en route.

Add yet another railway to my list of lines I have to go photograph at least once in my life...

Now you can...

[elzurawka]

...join the mile high club without ever leaving the ground!

Mod Parent Down

[michaeltoe]

This guy is just a sucker who reads more into the headlines on DrudgeReport than he does actual articles anywhere else. There are no 'faked pictures', there are merely CG images meant to demonstrate the landing, very similar to how NASA demonstrated the landing of the mars rovers, where no one was there to photograph it.

This type of thing goes on all the time in western media, and there was no attempt to pass off the images as actual photographs. It's just a misconception put forth by xenophobic conspiracy nuts.

Re:I'm not a transportation engineer...

[KiranWolf]

I would hardly call Amtrak representative of rail transportation as a whole. Amtrak is a joke, both to Americans and to the rest of the world and, outside of the Northeast Corridor between D.C. and Boston, and maybe somewhere out on the west coast, is useless.

Meanwhile, rail forms the backbone of most developed nations, including France, Germany, and Japan. In case you weren't paying attention, a train also now links England and France via the Channel Tunnel. Bluntly put, America is the exception, not the rule.