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China opens northernmost high-speed railway: Harbin–Yichun line enters service
China's northernmost high-speed railway, the 318-km Harbin–Yichun line, opened today: 250 km/h, ~2 hours Harbin–Yichun, crossing discontinuous permafrost.
Why it matters
It is the farthest north a high-speed railway has ever reached in China, and the first anywhere designed to run over discontinuous permafrost — a template for cold-climate rail that engineers spent years solving. It also anchors four new high-speed sections that opened across China on the same day, tightening the national fast-rail grid.
Full report
The Harbin–Yichun high-speed railway opened to passengers on Monday (September 28), becoming China's northernmost high-speed line, according to Xinhua and multiple reports.
The 318-kilometre line is designed for 250 km/h and has nine stations: Harbin, Harbin North, Hulan North, Xinglongzhen West, Suihua South, Qing'an South, Tieli, Riyuexia and Yichun West. The journey between Harbin and Yichun drops from about seven hours to roughly two.
The line crosses the Xiaoxing'anling mountains and is China's first high-speed railway built over discontinuous permafrost, traversing 14 island-permafrost sections totaling 5.8 kilometres in a region where winter temperatures fall to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Builders said 72 percent of that alpine section runs on bridges to protect the frozen ground. Construction began in 2021, with trial operation starting in March 2026.
Dimsum Daily reported that three other high-speed sections opened the same day: Xiong'an–Shangqiu (Hebei–Henan), Xi'an–Ankang (Shaanxi) and Yichang–Xingshan (Hubei).
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