The Taklimakan Desert, once known as the “Sea of Death”, is eager to hear the sound of train whistle as the desert highways are gradually intertwined into a network. The Taklimakan Desert cannot be without railways forever. This article is from the WeChat official account:Geo-Valley (ID: Geo-Valley) author: Han Shan springs, from head Figure: vision China
School/a humanistic dog painting/Windcatcher picture/Geographic Valley
The Taklimakan Desert, known as the “Sea of Death”, is located in the Tarim Basin in northwestern China. The Taklimakan Desert is the tenth largest desert in the world and the second largest mobile desert in the world, covering an area of 330,000 square kilometers. Years of drought and water shortage, year-round strong winds, extreme temperature difference between day and night… the superposition of various unfavorable factors makes this desert inaccessible, which is also a common feature of most deserts.
Overlooking the Taklimakan Desert from the satellite
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also led to a substantial increase in the cost of building roads, from shutterstock
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The natural conditions in the desert are extremely sinister, making crossing the desert has become a fantasy for a long time.
Why is it a fantasy to cross the desert? Let’s not talk about other factors, just talk about transportation. For a long time, camels have been the only means of transportation in desert areas, so they have been called “desert boats”. The body shape of a camel, although compared to humans, is already very tall and strong. But the camel, after all, is also a living body. There are too many limitations to rely solely on camels for travel.
Later, mankind invented a special car for the desert. The structure of the desert special vehicle is fully adapted to driving in the desert under completely roadless conditions, and has the passenger or freight functions of ordinary cars. But the disadvantage is that the manufacturing difficulty of desert special vehicles is higher than that of ordinary vehicles, and the use cost is higher, which is neither economical nor convenient.
Desert off-road vehicles need at least four-wheel drive to prevent falling into the quicksand, while higher configurations require six-wheel drive, which is good for driving system and chassis stability. Raised a big challenge from shutterstock
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Using a special desert vehicle can travel short distances within the desert range, but it is obviously unrealistic to rely solely on it to travel through the Taklimakan Desert, which is 400 kilometers wide in northern Vietnam and 1,000 kilometers long from east to west. After all, if the fuel runs out, there is no gas station deep in the desert. Unfortunately, desert special vehicles consume more fuel than ordinary vehicles.
Must try to cross the desert
But we must try to cross the Taklimakan Desert, where there are treasures hidden in the depths. Due to the continuous discovery of resources such as oil and natural gas, the “sea of death” has gradually become the “sea of hope”.
Since the 1950s, China has carried out oil and gas resource exploration in the Tarim Basin in a planned way. The predecessors of the petroleum industry have the grand ambition of “I offer oil for the motherland”, and successively went to Kuqaao in the Tarim Basin. Five large-scale oil and gas surveys and exploration battles were conducted in the Southwest Depression and the Southwest Depression. However, due to factors such as complex geological conditions, backward technology and equipment, and national oil strategy adjustments, only Iqi Creek and Ke Several small oil and gas fields such as Keya have experienced a tortuous course of “five ups and five downs”.
Oil workers desperately working overtime in winter
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From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, in accordance with the onshore petroleum industry’s strategic deployment of “stabilizing the east and developing the west”, my country has stepped up the development of oil and gas fields in the western desert hinterland and shifted the focus of oil development to the Tarim Basin. .
Also in the early 1980s, the former Ministry of Petroleum cooperated with the American Geophysical Corporation to complete 19 regional seismic sections running through the north and south of the Tarim Basin, and basically found out the geological structure of the basin’s “three highs and four depressions” , Completed the first round of resource evaluation, laying a good foundation for a new round of oil wars.
In September 1984, a blowout occurred in the Shashen No. 2 well between Luntai County and Kuqa County in the northern part of the Taklimakan Desert. People were pleasantly surprised and strengthened their confidence in searching for large oil fields. Since then, they have been searching in Lunnan and Yingmaili. To high-yield oil flow. In April 1989, the former China National Petroleum Corporation established the Tarim Petroleum Exploration and Development Headquarters in Korla, Xinjiang, and mobilized elites on the national oil front. The “Six Upper Tarim” launched the oil congress and achieved fruitful results.
“Six Upper Tarim”, many young people volunteered to join the “battlefield” for their home and country
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From 1989 to 1992, oil and gas were successively discovered in Lunnan 2, Tazhong 1 and Tazhong 4 wells.On this basis, a strategic breakthrough was achieved in the oil and gas exploration and development of the Tarim Basin, which roughly formed today’s Lunnan. The pattern of oil fields and Tazhong oil fields. Since then, the oil and gas resources in the Tarim Basin have become more abundant.
Distribution of oil and gas fields in Tarim Basin
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Today’s Lunnan Oilfield, from Shutterstock
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To develop such a wealth of resources, must have stable and reliable traffic access conditions as support. At this time, the construction of the Taklimakan Desert Highway (originally called the “Talimu Desert Petroleum Highway”) is on the agenda.
In order to develop the rich oil and natural gas resources in the hinterland of the Taklimakan Desert, while shortening the distance from Urumqi to Hotan and other areas, and speeding up the poverty alleviation and enrichment of the residents of the southern edge of the Tarim Basin, a plan to build a dedicated channel came out. Past life of the desert highway from Luntai to Minfeng. As early as November 1989, the feasibility study meeting on desert road construction was held in Korla.
An intertwined desert highway
Currently, there is more than one road directly crossing the Taklimakan Desert, but the road from Luntai to Minfeng Desert was the first to start construction. The narrow “Taklimakan Desert Highway” refers to the Luntai to Minfeng Desert Highway.
From shutterstock
In May 1991, the feasibility report of the Tarim Desert Petroleum Highway Engineering Technology Research passed the expert demonstration. The project was officially included in the national “Eighth Five-Year Plan” key scientific and technological breakthrough project in October 1991, with a planned investment of 594 million yuan. span>. Construction began in March 1993. On July 12, 1994, the 219-kilometer desert road from Xiaotang to Tazhong Well 4 was completed, but this did not mean that the entire project was completed.
In September 1994, in order to support the economic development of southern Xinjiang, the State Council decided that the desert road should run from north to south. At the beginning of 1995, the construction of the 227-kilometer desert road from Tazhong No. 4 to Minfeng began. By September 6, 1995, the desert road from Luntai to Minfeng was fully connected.
Printed with China Petroleum’s promotional slogans, from shutterstock
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The completion of the 400-kilometer desert road in just over two years is a miracle. It turned out that engineers and technicians took full advantage of a wonderful feature of sand and innovated construction methods. The compressive strength of loose sand is extremely poor, while the compressive strength of fixed sand is extremely strong, exceeding that of clay.
So, during the construction process, the sand was first pushed out of the shape of the roadbed, then wrapped and fixed with geotextile, and then vibrated and compacted. The compressive strength of the roadbed after dry vibratory compaction exceeded that of ordinary roadbeds and reached the national level. More than one and a half times the standard. After the roadbed process is completed, it is necessary to lay stones on the roadbed. With such a high-strength roadbed, the thickness of the required stone layer is reduced by about half.
From shutterstock
This construction method was later summarized as the “Strong Foundation and Thin Surface” method. In order to prevent wind and sand, there are special sand prevention projects besides the road body engineering. Sand-fixing technologies such as reed fences and reed grids can give full play to their effects and are currently at the leading level of similar technologies in the world.
The dense grass squares beside the highway are necessary protection for sand fixation and road protection, from shutterstock
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I look forward to hearing the train whistle
The advantage of road transportation is flexibility, but the disadvantages are also obvious. The single-vehicle transportation volume is relatively small and the manpower and material resources are high. Especially in the long-distance transportation process, it is even more unsuitable. Compared with road transportation, railway transportation has large volume, good continuity, and is more capable of long-distance transportation. In terms of speed, (refers to the speed in transit, regardless of the transit link)< /span> also has certain advantages.
In middle school geography textbooks, railways are often compared to “economic artery”, which is not unreasonable. The Taklimakan Desert, once known as the “Sea of Death”, is eager to hear the sound of train whistle as the desert highways are gradually intertwined into a network. The Taklimakan Desert cannot be without railways forever.
For some remote villages, it can’t always be like this, from shutterstock
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In fact, there has long been a railway on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert. For example, the Kahe Railway from Kashgar to Hotan, and the Haro Railway from Hami South Station to Lop Nur, have all reached the edge of the Taklimakan Desert.
But until the first half of 2014, there was not a railway that passed directly through the hinterland of the Taklimakan Desert. It wasn’t until the planning of the Geku Railway from Golmud to Korla was born that it was the first time that the hinterland of the Taklimakan Desert was about to usher in a dragon that could bring well-being.
Kahe Railway, from shutterstock
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At the end of 2014, construction of the Gekku Railway from Korla to Golmud started. Korla is located in the central part of Xinjiang. Its position as the economic center is very important, and it is also one of Xinjiang’s transportation hubs. The 218 National Road leads to Yining City and then to Central Asia. Golmud is located in the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It is the Cheng-Ku Railway (planning), Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and Getun Railway (under construction) and the intersection of Dunge Highway. After the completion of the two new railways, Golmud will become the core transportation hub connecting Xining, Lhasa, Dunhuang and Korla.
The main line of the Ge-Ku Railway is 1214.6 kilometers in length, including 708 kilometers in Xinjiang and 503.9 kilometers in Qinghai Province, with a design speed of 120km/h. The route starts from Golmud, Qinghai Province, goes west through Wutumeiren, Gansen, and Huatugou, after crossing Altyn Mountain, and then passes through Milan, Ruoqiang, and Yuli in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region to Korla. It is the second major railway corridor between my country and Xinjiang.
Spanning provinces and regions, connecting hubs (the dotted line indicates that it has not been opened to traffic), from shutterstock
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Its completion is of great significance for improving the framework of my country’s northwest railway network, promoting exchanges between the west and the inland, promoting the economic and social development of Xinjiang and Qinghai provinces, strengthening the unity of ethnic regions and consolidating national defense security. After the completion of the Geku Railway, the traffic pressure on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway will be greatly eased, and the travel time from Korla to Golmud will be shortened from 26 hours by car bus to about 12 hours by passenger train. On July 1, 2020, the Qinghai section of the Gekko Railway was officially opened to traffic, and the Xinjiang section is not far away from the opening.
From shutterstock
The Tarim Basin is hungry for railway demand. While the Ge-Ku Railway is still under construction, planning has begun again from Ruoqiang, an intermediate station of Ge-Ku Railway, to Heruo Railway in Hotan. Ruoqiang County was a must pass on the ancient Silk Road, and now it has become a railway intersection. At the end of 2018, Heruo Railway officially started construction.
Heruo Railway officially started construction, from shutterstock
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The minimum circular curve radius of Heruo Railway has reached 1600m, which means that its operating speed may increase to 140km/h. After the completion of the Heruo Railway, the Hege-Ku Railway (under construction) and the Nanjiang Railway (opened to traffic), Kahe Railway (opened to traffic) form a circular railway network around the Taklimakan Desert.
The old and new railways “surround” the Taklimakan Desert (the dotted line indicates that it has not been opened to traffic)
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Integrated transportation network
The goal of modern transportation is to establish a comprehensive and unified transportation system. The five major modes of transportation, including roads, railways, aviation, water transportation, and pipelines, should perform their duties and work together. The construction of transportation facilities in the Taklimakan Desert is no exception. Now the road network in the Taklimakan Desert has taken shape, and the circular railway network surrounding the Tarim Basin is also under construction. We have reason to believe that increasingly convenient transportation will bring more hope to the Taklimakan Desert, which has been called the Sea of Death since ancient times.
Reference material:
Road survey and design. Edited by Yang Shaowei;
China Petroleum Tarim Oilfield Company website
This article is from WeChat official account: Geo-Valley (ID: Geo- Valley) , author: Han Shan springs