Freight rail tunnel breaks through early

Workers on Sunday morning completed the digging of a tunnel for the world's longest heavy-freight railway - which will stretch from coal-rich northern China to the country's central provinces - five months ahead of schedule, the project contractor said.

The 14.5-kilometer Dazhongshan Tunnel is being built in Sanmenxia, Henan province, by Shanghai Civil Engineering Co, a subsidiary of China Railway Engineering Corp.

It is an essential part of the Inner Mongolia-Jiangxi Railway coal freight project, which is 1,837 km long and expected to carry about 200 million metric tons a year from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Shaanxi and Gansu provinces to central China, including Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.