A visit to Mohan Railway Station, the start of the China-Laos Railway

A group of journalists from Myanmar, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand visited the Mohan railway station connecting the metropolitan Kunming city, Yunnan Province in the south of the People’s Republic of China to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos.
We arrived at Kunming South Railway Station at 6:30 pm China Standard Time on 17 June to leave for Mohan railway station. Kunming South Railway Station is 20 kilometres from the Yunnan Museum at the heart of Kunming City, 28 km from Kunming Railway Station, 48 km from Kunming Changshui International Airport and 80 km from the Stone Forest.
Kunming South Railway is the focal high-speed rail station, linking the Shanghai-Kunming line, Nanning-Kunming and Pan-Asian Railway network. It becomes a land-linked logistics hub under the One Belt and One Road strategy.
The station covers an area of 312,836 square metres. There is a tight security measures at stations like airports. Passports for foreigners and resident identity cards for citizens are mandatory to buy a train ticket.
We had to go the tube or take the escalator to reach the train platform. The station built on rugged terrain provides facilities and amenities including public transport connections such as other rails, buses, and taxis.
There are bridges and tunnels along the way to preserve the ecosystem. We passed Yunnan’s Pu’er and Xishuangbanna en route to Mohan railway station from Kunming South Railway Station.
High-tech Mohan railway station is located in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture with a cross-border checkpoint.
The construction of the railway station began on 1 September 2015 and it was commissioned into service on 3 December 2021.
“This railway is a part of the passenger and freight rail corridor project linking China, Laos and other Asian countries. The Kunming-Laos rail line is 1,035 km long, having 167 tunnels and 301 bridges,” a railway officer told the Global New Light of Myanmar (GNLM).
The rail line traverses over the rugged mountain, with tunnels and bridges. Mohan railway station uses advanced technology for security checks, health surveys and arrival and departure records like the airport.
The electric locomotive from China’s Kunming to Laos’s Vientiane has coaches with 720 seats, with a designed speed of 160 km per hour and it takes about 10 and a half hours including boarding pass processing time.
China-Laos Railway handled 20,000 passenger trips as of 31 January 2023, transporting 10.3 million passengers.
The number of railway stations on the side of Laos increased to ten from seven. With railway facilities and amenities being upgraded, the number of passengers on China-Lao railway trips has grown. Consequently, the two countries expect to boost their tourism sector.
Mohan Rail serves three trains for cross-border passengers and eight coaches for domestic passengers.
A total of 417,400 passengers were transported between January and February this year, which indicates a tremendous growth rate of 256.2 per cent compared to the same period last year, a locomotive company stated.
Beyond the railway hub between the Southeast Asian nations and China (China-Laos railway project), China is implementing the Pan-Asia railway network covering Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Singapore. Translated.