The Tianjin–Pukou or Jinpu railway ( Postal spelling: Tientsin-Pukow Railway; ) runs from

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popu ...

Pukou district Pukou District (), is one of 11 districts of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, China, lying northwest across the Yangtze River from downtown Nanjing. The district was formerly the southern terminus of the Tianjin-Pukou Railway; railcars ...

outside

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its ca ...

province.

History

The first proposals to build railways in China began in the 1860s with opposition from the elite, who worried that it would increase the likelihood of regime change. However, following China's loss in the

First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the ...

in 1895, the desire to modernize began to predominate. However, due to technical and financial constraints, foreign support was needed to build the earliest railways. At a conference in London in September 1898, British and German capitalists decided to build a railway from

Zhenjiang Zhenjiang, alternately romanized as Chinkiang, is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province, China. It lies on the southern bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou (to its north) and ...

. In May 1899, the Qing government agreed to the financing of the railway construction along with a series of bank loans. The proposed course for the railway was to connection the political center of China in the north to the economic hub in the southern region, as well as the

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest list of rivers of Asia, river in Asia, the list of rivers by length, third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in th ...

. Construction of the railway began in 1908 and the line was completed in 1912. All together, the original railway line was built with 85 stations, of which 31 were in Shandong province. Rail traffic had to be ferried across the Yangtze to Nanjing to connect with the railroads passing through that city until the

Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge (), previously called the First Nanjing Yangtze Bridge, is a double-decked road-rail truss bridge across the Yangtze River in Nanjing, Jiangsu, connecting the city's Pukou and Gulou districts. Its upper deck i ...

was built across the river in 1968. Currently, it is the main section of

Beijing–Shanghai railway The Beijing–Shanghai railway or Jinghu railway () is a railway line between Beijing and Shanghai. The line has a total length of and connects the municipalities of Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai, as well as the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, ...

History

References

See also