Ramadan 10-day City Railway Light Rail in operation. Photo courtesy of interviewee
"Ramadan 10 City Light Rail has shortened my commute by two hours" "This line has effectively helped relieve traffic pressure in Egypt", "It is very well built"... On the Ramadan 10-Day City Railway Light Railway, many passengers praised the convenience that the light rail brought to the local area.
The electrified railway operated by this light rail train is the Ramadan 10-day city railway project in Egypt with the participation of China Railway-AVIC International Consortium, which is an important link connecting downtown Cairo, satellite cities along the eastern route and Egypt's new administrative capital. From Cairo, Egypt's capital, take Metro Line 3 to Adélie Mansour Station, and after 12 stations and a distance of about 67 kilometers, you will reach the art and culture station of Egypt's new administrative capital.
The Ramadan 10-day Railway Light Railway, which runs at a maximum speed of 120km/h. Photo courtesy of interviewee
It is understood that the Ramadan 10th City Railway Light Rail is an important transportation project for Egypt to realize the national "eastward development" strategy and focus on building the "Eastern Economic Corridor". At the beginning of the construction of this project, Egypt did not have a standardized electrified railway, and its existing operating railway adopted a non-standard design, which could not meet the operating conditions of high-speed rail.
At the same time, as the earliest city in Africa to build a metro in Cairo, its urban construction basically adopts European and American standards, with strong flexibility, for some special parameters, it is difficult to find relevant provisions in the European and American standard system, often need to use the local or other international norms of the project to reference or refer to the implementation. To this end, the Egyptian government hopes to introduce a mature Chinese standard system.
In the face of international standards, technical systems, engineering interfaces and other problems, the Egypt Ramadan 10th City Railway Project Department of China Railway Fifth Bureau carefully organized the construction, fully completed the tasks of pillar assembly, network cable erection, substation equipment installation and cable laying, and achieved the success of cold slip, power transmission and hot slip in sections A, B and C on January 14, March 27 and June 15, 2022 respectively. On July 3, 2022, after more than a year of construction, the Egypt's Ramadan 10-Day City Railway was successfully opened to traffic, filling the gap of Egypt's AC electrified railway.
Rolling stock for the Ramadan 10th City Railway Project is being transported. Photo courtesy of interviewee
It not only brings intelligent support to the project in terms of technology, but also provides all-round assistance to Chinese enterprises in terms of service guarantee.
The reporter learned that CRRC Sifang signed a vehicle supply contract with China Railway-AVIC International Consortium in 2018, responsible for providing 22 electric units and 12 years of maintenance services for the project. China Railway Second Hospital Construction Company is the international logistics and transportation service unit of the equipment and materials of the project.
In order to ensure the safe and timely delivery of materials required for the project to the Egyptian project site, China Railway Second Institute Construction Company has successively organized personnel to go to the Egyptian site, Beijing, Yantai, Wuhan, Xi'an, Taizhou and other places to guide and check the work of material packaging, inland transportation, short dumping, storage point inspection, customs clearance and other links, and finally selected a cargo ship with a load capacity of 20,000 tons and a loading volume of 30,000 square meters to carry it, and coordinated the owner to disassemble the vehicle into a group of 3, a total of 4 groups of 12 vehicles. It is placed in the bottom compartment and the second deck to ensure the safety of vehicle transportation. On July 19, 2021, the first batch of 12 rail vehicles and transformers was loaded and shipped at Qingdao Port and finally arrived in Alexandria.
In addition, Ramadan 10th City Railway Project has set up a total of 2 main substations, the core equipment of the entire traction power supply system is from China, of which the 27.5kV GIS overhead switchgear is the first fist product independently developed by China Railway Second Institute in accordance with IEC standards and the first time to go abroad, which has been unanimously recognized by the owner and supervisor, and has become a bright business card for Chinese brands and Chinese manufacturing to go abroad.
"The first and second phases of the railway project are currently in operation, providing efficient and convenient transportation services for people traveling between the old city of Cairo, the capital of Egypt, and the new administrative capital." The project leader said. (Huang Sheng also contributed to this article)
Authors: Liu Yang, Sun Zhao, Yan Chuan Jiyu
Source: People's Network