On April 22, according to the National Energy Group, at 11:39 on April 20, the 30,000-ton heavy-haul train of the Shuohuang Railway of the National Energy Group arrived safely at Huanghua Port Station.
This marks the complete success of the 30,000-ton heavy-haul train operation test and a new breakthrough in the application of fully autonomous technology.
The train is pulled by four "Guoneng" high-power AC electric locomotives, with a total power equivalent to more than 52,000 horsepower.
Fully loaded with 324 carriages of coal, with a total length of 4,088 meters and a total weight of about 32,400 tons, it is the longest and largest heavy-haul combination train of the continental railway.
According to reports, the 30,000-ton heavy-haul train project of Shuohuang Railway will be launched in 2021 and will be included in one of the pilot projects for the construction of a transportation power, which is a strategic technical reserve for the integrated operation capacity of the National Energy Group.
The project adopts advanced technologies such as fully autonomous TD-LTE, traction network control, air braking, and wireless synchronous control, and is an innovative configuration of production factors for high-power AC electric locomotives and heavy-duty freight vehicles, with the characteristics of high technology, high efficiency and high quality.
It is estimated that a 30,000-ton heavy-haul combined train can increase the annual capacity by 3.15 million tons compared with a 20,000-ton train.
China Energy Group has been running 20,000-ton heavy-haul trains on a regular basis for many years, of which the Shuohuang Railway has been in operation for 8 years, with a total of more than 100,000 trains and more than 1.1 billion tons of coal transported.
The mainland's coal resources are more in the west and less in the east, rich in the north and poor in the south, and are not coordinated with regional economic development, which determines the pattern of "coal transportation from the west to the east" and "coal transportation from the north to the south", and railway transportation is the safest and main way of coal transportation by virtue of its large volume, long distance, high efficiency, and not restricted by climatic conditions.