User:Dragfyre/Sandbox/Yunnan-Vietnam Railway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yunnan–Vietnam Railway or Sino-Vietnamese Railway was a 855 km metre gauge railway built by France between 1898 and 1910, connecting the Vietnamese city of Haiphong with the Chinese city of Kunming, via the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. The 466 km (290 mi)-long section within China from Kunming to Hekou is known as the Kunming–Hekou Railway. The 389 km (242 mi)-long section within Vietnam can be subdivided further into two legs: the 296 km (184 mi)-long Hanoi–Lao Cai Railway, and the 102 km (63 mi)-long Hanoi–Haiphong Railway (both legs share a common set of tracks near Hanoi).[1] Building the railway was an extremely difficult undertaking, mainly due to poor working conditions, the hazardous mountainous terrain of Yunnan, and the ubiquity of malaria in the region. Upwards of 12,000 labourers were said to have lost their lives during its construction.[2]
The route used metre gauge tracks throughout, like most of the other railways built in Indochina. Currently, the Kunming–Hekou section is the only main line in China using metre gauge. This section features many structures notable for their advanced design developed to respond to the difficulties of the terrain, such as the pont en dentelles ("lace bridge") and the pont sur arbalétriers ("bridge on rafters", known as the Faux-Namti or Wujiazhai bridge).[2][3]