Construction began Tuesday on a second railway connecting Manzhouli, the main crossing on the Sino-Russian border, and Hailar city in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The project will create a dual track for the entire length of the century-old trunk line linking Manzhouli and Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. A dual track forms the Harbin-Hailar section of the 934-km line.

The existing railway between Manzhouli and Hailar had only a single track, said Yu Guangji, administrative leader of Manzhouli Railway Station.

"The single line between Manzhouli and Hailar has become a bottleneck for the development of Manzhouli crossing," said Yu.

With a budget of 1.8 billion yuan (222 million U.S. dollars), the project will have a length of 178 km and will take 18 months to complete.

The crossing's annual cargo handling capacity is expected to rise to 40 million tons from the 17.5 million tons it handled last year.

Source: Xinhua