The first section of Line 2, between Sanyuanli and Pazhou, opened on December 28 last year. But operations were suspended until May 8 for partial testing.

Testing finished last Friday on the signaling system, which is considered the core of debugging work.

Wang Yongsheng, vice-director of the Guangzhou Metro Corp and general director in charge of the general debugging work, said yesterday that 18 different systems have to be tested separately before the general testing of all the systems combined.

The way the trains start, stop, speed up and slow down all depend on the signals operation, said Wang, who worked for years in the field of signals at an academic institute in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, before he took up his current position in Guangzhou.

Six trains, borrowed from Line 1, were used in to test the signals on Line 2 last Friday.

Christina Luebke -- a German research and development engineer with Siemens Transportation Systems, who was testing on the system -- said: "Up to now, everything has gone well."

On June 28, eight trains are set to start transporting passengers on Line 2. All of the eight trains are from Line 1.

Line 2 so far has only one train of its own, which was imported from Germany.

The first of another 25 trains is set to go into operation in September, with one new train arriving in each of the following 24 months.

Wang said: "Seventy per cent of the Line 2 trains have been produced locally."

Except the German models, the trains are all being made in Changchun, capital of Northeast China's Jilin Province.

Line 2 is 18.5 kilometers long and has 16 stops. There will be a 10-minute gap between trains, compared to the 6-minute wait on Line 1.

"The time gap is decided by the general passenger-flow capacity, which will be adjusted in a timely manner in accordance with transport capacity," Wang said. "Line 2 is estimated to be suitable for a 10-minute gap."

(China Daily June 16, 2003)