History
Beijing and Shanghai were not linked by rail until 1912, when the Jinpu railway was completed between Tianjin and Pukou.[22] With the existing railway between Beijing and Tianjin, which was completed in 1900, the Huning railway between Nanjing and Shanghai opened in 1908, interrupted by a ferry between Pukou and Nanjing across the Yangtze River. A weekly Beijing–Shanghai direct train was first introduced in 1913.
In 1933, a train ride from Beijing to Shanghai took around 44 hours, at an average speed of 33 km/h. Passengers had to get off in Pukou with their luggage, board a ferry named "Kuaijie" across the Yangtze, and get on another connecting train in Xiaguan on the other side of the river.
In 1933, the Nanjing Train Ferry was opened for service. The new train ferry, "Changjiang" (Yangtze), built by a British company, was 113.3 m long, 17.86 m wide, was able to carry 21 freight cars or 12 passenger cars. Passengers could remain on the train when crossing the river, and the travel time was thus cut to around 36 hours. The train service was suspended during the Japanese invasion.
In 1949, from Shanghai's North railway station toward Beijing (then Beiping) it took 36 hours, 50 minutes, at an average speed of 40 km/h. In 1956 the trip time was cut to 28 hours, 17 minutes. In the early 1960s, the travel time was further cut down to 23 hours, 39 minutes.
In October 1968, the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was opened. The travel time was cut to 21 hours, 34 minutes. As new diesel locomotives were introduced in the 1970s, the speed was increased further. In 1986, the travel time was 16 hours, 59 minutes.
China introduced six line schedule reductions from 1997 to 2007. In October 2001, train T13/T14 took about 14 hours from Beijing to Shanghai. On April 18, 2004, Z-series trains were introduced. The trip time was cut to 11 hours, 58 minutes. There were five trains departing around 7 pm every day, each 7 minutes apart, arriving at their destination the next morning.
The railway was completely electrified in 2006. On April 18, 2007, the new CRH bullet train was introduced on the upgraded railway as part of the Sixth Railway Speed-Up Campaign. A day-time train D31 served the route, departing from Beijing at 10:50 every morning, and arriving at Shanghai at 20:49 in the evening, travelling mostly at 160-200 km/h (up to 250 km/h in a very short section between Anting and Shanghai West). In 2008 overnight sleeper CRH trains were introduced, replacing the locomotive-hauled Z sleeper trains. With a new high-speed intercity line opening between Nanjing and Shanghai in the summer of 2010, the sleeper trains made use of the high-speed line in the Shanghai–Nanjing section, travelling at 250 km/h for a longer distance. The fastest sleeper trains took 9 hours, 49 minutes, with four intermediate stops, at an average speed of 149 km/h.
As the Nanjing Yangtze Bridge connected the two sections of the railway into a continuous line, the entire railway between Beijing and Shanghai was renamed the Jinghu Railway, with Jing (京) being the standard Chinese abbreviation for Beijing, and Hu (沪), short for Shanghai. The Jinghu Railway has served as China's busiest railway for nearly a century. Due to rapid growth in passenger and freight traffic in the last 20 years, this line has reached and surpassed capacity.
Dedicated high-speed rail proposal
The Jinghu high-speed railway was proposed in the early 1990s, because one quarter of the country's population lived along the existing Beijing-Shanghai rail line[17] In December 1990, the Ministry of Railways submitted to the National People's Congress a proposal to build the Beijing–Shanghai high speed railway parallel to the existing Beijing–Shanghai railway line.[23] In 1995, Premier Li Peng announced that work on the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway would begin in the 9th Five Year Plan (1996–2000). The Ministry's initial design for the high-speed rail line was completed, and a report was submitted for state approval in June 1998.[24] The construction plan was set in 2004, after a five-year debate on whether to use steel-on-steel rail track, or maglev technology. Maglev was not chosen due to its incompatibility with China's existing rail-and-track technology and its high price, which is two times higher than that of conventional rail technology.[25][26]
