World's deepest and largest high-speed rail station to come up in China soon

China has announced that it will build the world's deepest and largest high-speed rail station at the Badaling section of the country's Great Wall, local media reported on Thursday (29 September).
The construction of the new station is part of China's arrangements for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The station will be situated along the 174-kilometer Beijing-Zhangjiakou railway link, which is under construction.

"It will run through mountains where the Great Wall is winding, so we adopted some of the world's advanced explosion technologies to guarantee it would not affect the Great Wall," Luo Duhao, chief engineer of the railway group for the Badaling section, said.

"The Badaling station will be located 102 meters below the surface, with an underground construction area of 36,000 square meters, equal to five standard soccer fields, making it the deepest and largest high-speed railway station in the world," Chen Bin, director in charge of construction for China Railway No 5 Engineering Group, said on Wednesday.

Bin also added that the new station, which is expected to be completed by 2019, will have three floors including separate floors for the arrival and departure — similar to the airport arrangement. It will also have two escalators with vertical heights of 62 meters, reportedly the highest in the country.

After the completion of the railway project, travel time between the Beijing North Station and the Olympics venues in Chongli of Zhangjiakou will be reduced from three-plus hours to around 50 minutes, Bin said.