The last rail for the 955.35 kilometers section running from the capital city of Xi'an in northwestern Shaanxi Province to Hefei, the capital of East China's Anhui Province, was laid on June 18.

Chang Zhimin, deputy director of the Xi'an-Nanjing Railway Project, said that the Xi'an-Hefei part is expected to go into operation by Spring next year. The speed will be set at 80 kilometers per hour initially.

The entire line, running from Xi'an to Nanjing in eastern Jiangsu Province, will run 1,027 kilometers. It has taken 100,000 railway builders across the country three years to do the job. And the construction of the remaining part, from Hefei to Nanjing, is scheduled to begin in the latter half of this year.

Experts believe the new railway will boost the economic integration of China's western, central and eastern areas.

Meanwhile, another railway that links China's outlying needy western regions with the developed eastern coastal areas is the 1,736-kilometer rail route between Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu province, to Lianyungang city in northern Jiangsu Province, was completed in the early 1950s, about half a century ago.