Lhasa Railway Station
A 1,080 km section of the Qingzang railway has been completed from Golmud to Lhasa. The 815 km section from Xining to Golmud in Qinghai opened to traffic in 1984. The railway's highest point, the Tanggula Mountain Pass, is 5,072 m above sea level, making it the highest railway in the world. More than 960 km, or over four-fifths of the railway, is at an altitude of more than 4,000 m, and over half of it was laid on frozen earth. Because of the high altitudes, carriages are supplied with supplemental oxygen.
Linking Lhasa and Xigaze together in Tibet, the construction of a 254 km extension line of the Qingzang railway will start in 2007 with completion expected by 2010. This railway, the first feeder line for the Qingzang railway, will cost around 11 billion yuan (US$1.42 billion), said Dotub, a Tibetan legislator at a press conference held on the sidelines of the country's parliamentary session in Beijing.