Faster Changsha link by year end

A new high-speed rail link between Shanghai and Changsha in central China's Hunan Province will open before the end of the year, the Shanghai Railway Bureau said over the weekend.

This will cut the high-speed journey between the two cities from seven hours to five, said officials.

And it will be about 10 hours faster than the K533, K137 and K1373 standard train services making the journey.

The 931-kilometer section of line between Changsha and Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province is part of the Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway. That will become fully operational in 2017.

The new section will connect with the Shanghai-Hangzhou High-Speed Railway by the year end, providing a faster link between the middle of China and the Yangtze River Delta, said officials.

The section will pass through Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.

While the trains can reach 350 kilometers per hour, the operational speed will be limited to 300km/h, said the bureau.

The bureau ran test operations on part of the section between Hangzhou and Nanchang in Jiangxi Province between July and late October.

And a two-month training program has begun for 415 crew members and 1,800 engineers who will be operating the new section, the bureau said.

As another section of the Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway, the Nanchang-Changsha High-Speed Railway, went into operation on September 16.

China has the world's longest high-speed railway network, which covered a distance of 10,000km of track by the end of 2013.

Seven more lines are scheduled to be complete before the end of the year, Xinhua news agency said.