Pukbunaeryuk Line

The Pukbunaeryuk Line, also called the Hyesan–Manp'o Ch'ŏngnyŏn Line after the only completed stage of three planned stages, is an electrified standard-gauge secondary trunk line of the Korean State Railway in Chagang and Ryanggang Provinces, North Korea, connecting the Manp'o Line at Manp'o to the Paektusan Ch'ŏngnyŏn Line at Hyesan.Kokubu, Hayato, 将軍様の鉄道 (Shōgun-sama no Tetsudō), It also connects to the China Railway Meiji Railway via the Ji'an Yalu River Border Railway Bridge between Manp'o and Meihekou, China.

The Pukbunaeryuk Line was to have been a northern east–west trunk line of 북부철길 전철화, 동아일보
1992 January 30 on the Manp'o–Hyesan–Musan– Hoeryŏng route,북부 철길 건설
/ref> but this plan has not been realised.

There are 42 stations on the line, of which Chasŏng, Hwap'yŏng, P'op'yŏng Ch'ŏngnyŏn, and Mint'ang are dedicated freight consolidation points; the stations of Chŏnp'yŏng, Tuji, Sinp'a Ch'ŏngnyŏn, Ryanggang Sinsang, and Insan are served only by passenger trains. The line has 76 tunnels totalling over in length, and 116 bridges with a total length of over -북한 북부철길 개건사업 마감단계.. ‘제2의 마식령속도’ 창조
/ref> bridges make up 3.3% of the total length of the line, whilst tunnels account for 12.8% of the total route length.

There are locomotive facilities at Manp'o and Hyesan, and formerly at P'op'yŏng; Hyesan also has shops for maintenance of passenger and freight cars.

History

Having been the only major east–west trunk line at the time, the P'yŏngra Line had become overly congested by the 1970s, as all east–west traffic - even that moving between the northwest and the northeast - had to travel via the P'yŏngra Line. To alleviate the burden, President Kim Il Sung ordered the construction of a new, northern east–west transversal line in August 1980. This line, which was to have made use of parts of existing lines where possible, in addition to newly built trackage, was to have connected Manp'o in the west with Hoeryŏng in the east. This would have resulted in the creation of a direct connections between the Manp'o Line in the northwest and the Hambuk Line in the northeast of the country, allowing traffic between these two areas to avoid the P'yŏngra Line. This would also have significantly shortened the travelled distances.

The Pukbunaeryuk Line, as the planned line was called (북부, ''pukpu'', means "northern"), was to have been built in three stages: Manp'o to Hyesan, Hyesan to Musan, and Musan to Hoeryŏng.

Stage 1: Hyesan–Manp'o

In 1959, the Korean State Railway opened the Unbong Line, a line from Manp'o to Unbong, to assist with the construction of the Unbong Dam on the Yalu River which had begun in October of that year. The first stage of the northern trunk line, from Manp'o to Hyesan, made use of the entirety of the Unbong Line. A new passenger-friendly station was built at Unbong, called Sinunbong Station (="New Unbong Station") (the previous Unbong Station, which had been the terminus of the Unbong Line and, after the construction of the new line, became the terminus of the truncated Unbong Line, was later renamed Kuunbong Station - that is, "Old Unbong Station", and Sinunbong Station became simply Unbong Station). Work on the first stage was started at both ends in 1981; construction went slowly, with the from Sinunbong to Chasŏng and the from Hyesan to Huju being completed only on 27 November 1987. Kim Jong Il ordered the formation of youth work brigades who, moving over of earth and blasting millions of cubic metres of rock, completed construction of the final section between Chasŏng and Huju in 1988.북부철길 1단계공사완료
Kyunghyang Shinmun

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases