Railways

Yunnan is the only province in China where the standard gauge railway (gauge: 1.435m), meter gauge railway (gauge: 1m) and inch gauge railway (gauge: 0.6m) coexist; thus, Yunnan enjoys the repu¬tation of the Railway Museum. Now, there is an exhibition hall of Yunnan narrow gauge railway history in Kaiyuan City.

Of the Yunnan railways, Kunming - Hekou Railway is a meter gauge railway, a section of Yunnan - Vietnam Railway, and the first railway in Yunnan. It is 464km long, and was built during die period of 1900 - 1910 and open to traffic in 1910. Jijie - Gejiu Sub - line, 33km long, is the only inch railway in China. The standard gauge rail¬ways have been built after the 1960s, of which, Guiyang - Kunming Railway has a section of 341 km in Yunnan and was open to traffic on March 11,1966. Chengdu - Kunming Railway has a total length of 1,100 km, and its Yunnan section is 282 km, and was open to traffic on July 1st, 1970. Nanning - Kunming Railway has a total length of 898 km, and its Yunnan section is 306km and was open to traffic in December 1st, 1997. In addition, Kunming - Yuxi Railway and Guangtong- Dali Railway have also been put into operation, and Nei-jiang-Kunming Railway has been under construction.

Now on the 4 trunk lines of Guiyang - Kunming, Chengdu - Kun¬ming, Nanning - Kunming and Kunming - Hekou railways, passenger trains and cargo trains run between Beijing, Shanghai, Xi an, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Beihai as well as Hanoi in Vietnam. The an¬nual passenger transport reaches 12,568,000 persons and cargo trans¬port 11,190, 000t.