China launched its longest train ferry service across the Bohai Sea, reducing the distance between the two busy commercial cities of Yantai in east China's Shandong Province and Dalian in Liaoning Province in the northeast by 1,800 kilometres.

A freight train that left Lushun in Dalian City for Yantai, a port city in east China's Shandong Province, marked the start of railway transport across the Bohai Sea. It is the first such service on the Bohai Sea, a horseshoe-shaped waterbody with an area of 77,000 sq km, in north China.

The ferry, a roll-on roll-off vessel 182.6 meters long and 24.8 meters wide, can carry a 50-car freight train, 50 twenty-tonne trucks, 25 passenger cars and 480 passengers.

In its maiden voyage from Lushun to Yantai, the USD 55 million ferry carried only 50 railway cars loaded with cargo such as timber and grain. The ferry is expected to reach Yantai in six hours.

The Yantai-Dalian train ferry will foster closer relations among China's three economic circles in the northeast, around the Bohai Sea and in the eastern Yangtze River Delta.

Source:佚名