When a new railway line opens in 2005 it will take only three hours to travel from Chongqing Municipality, a manufacturing center in southwest China, to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province.

According to a senior engineer from the local railway bureau, work is to start at the end of this year on the long-planned railway connecting Suining in Sichuan, also in southwest China, with Chongqing. The new 165-km railway section will hook up with the 187-km Daxian-Chengdu line at Suining.

Thanks to the new railway, it will take about three hours to travel the 352 km from Chongqing to Chengdu via Suining. Currently,the quickest travel between the two major cities takes 10 hours.

( People's Daily September 18, 2002)