Scenic route
Qinghai–Tibet Railway
Xining → Lhasa · China
Qinghai–Tibet Railway in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 1,956 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 21 h
- Average speed
- 93 km/h
- Top speed
- 160 km/h
- Operator
- China Railway
- Train
- Oxygen-enriched coaches
- Countries
- China
- In service since
- 2006
- Runs
- up to ~7× daily each way incl. through trains
- Highest point
- 5,072 m
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
The roof-of-the-world railway: 5,072 m over the Tanggula Pass on permafrost, with oxygen piped to every seat.
Passengers sign a health declaration before boarding, because most of a day is spent above 4,000 m, where even the antelope look better acclimatised than you. The Golmud–Lhasa section, finished in 2006, was engineering at the edge of the possible, its track raised on cooled embankments and long bridges so migrating chiru can pass beneath. Outside, the Kunlun and Tanggula ranges scroll past salt lakes and nomad camps until prayer-flagged passes give way to the Lhasa valley.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 152884 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 59 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 13 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: China Railway 12306 — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Qinghai Lake grasslands
- Kunlun Mountains gateway at Golmud
- Hoh Xil antelope reserve
- Tanggula station — the world’s highest
- Nagqu nomad plains
- prayer flags of the Lhasa valley
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More train routes in China.