(Photo: Sun Guangyong)

Luang Prabang (People’s Daily) – The China-Laos railway tunnels' construction project has made a decisive breakthrough with its longest tunnel being drilled on Friday in the tropical mountains of northern Laos.

(Photo: Sun Guangyong)

Seven months ahead of schedule, Chinese engineering companies, PowerChina Sinohydro Bureau 3 (Sinohydro 3) and Sinohydro 14, completed the 9,384-meter-long Ban Sen No.2 Tunnel, south to the ancient Lao capital of Luang Prabang, some 170km north of the capital Vientiane.

(Photo: Sun Guangyong)

This marks an important milestone in the construction of the China-Laos railway, as the engineering work enters the final phase.

The Ban Sen No. 2 Tunnel crosses the provincial border between Luang Prabang and Vientiane in the mountains, with steep terrain and complex geology, making for difficult construction and transportation conditions.

(Photo: Sun Guangyong)

The tunnel construction was started in March 2017 by the Chinese project contractors.

Now 79 percent of the civil engineering work has been completed on the Laos-China Railway, while progress has been made in lots of key and bottleneck projects, especially in the tunnel construction.

(Photo: Sun Guangyong)

The China-Laos Railway is a strategic docking project between the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Laos' strategy to convert from a landlocked country to a land-linked hub.

The 414km railway, with 198km of tunnels and 62km of bridges, will run from the Boten border gate in northern Laos, bordering China, to Vientiane with an operating speed of 160kmh.

(Photo: Sun Guangyong)

The electrified passenger and cargo railway is being built using Chinese management and technical standards.

The project is scheduled for completion in December 2021.