The country's first domestically built railway ferry will be put into operation in early 2003 across the Qiongzhou Strait between Guangdong and Hainan provinces.

"The carrier will serve as a lifeline to spur the development of Hainan," said Yu Baojun, deputy director of the National Engineering Research Center for Ship Design Technology.

The center is busy designing the carrier, a 165-metre double decker with an expected speed of 15 nautical miles per hour.

On the first deck there are four pairs of rails to hold the railway cars, which do not have to load and unload when embarking and disembarking. Cars will park on the second deck.

The 12.5-nautical-mile strait, which has been a bottleneck blocking the development of Hainan, will be covered in only 45 minutes under all weather conditions except in typhoons.

To date, visitors or cargo to Hainan have to either take a plane to the island or stop at Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province and transfer to boats.

But when the ferry begins operation, trains can directly board the ship and run to Hainan island.

In the 1980s, the two provinces and the Ministry of Railways decided to build the Yuehai (Guangdong-Hainan) Passage to link the two provinces.

After years of feasibility studies, the passage, composed of two railway lines and the railway ferry, with an investment of 4.5 billion yuan ($544 million), was started in 1997.

A 138-kilometre-long railway line is under construction to connect Zhanjiang where all trains to Hainan now stop on the southern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula.

The 182-kilometre long Chahai (Chahe-Haikou) railway built in Hainan will lead the trains directly to Sanya.

"The strait-crossing part is a key to the whole project which is significant to the Chinese history of boat building and railway construction," said Tang Jianwei, general manager of Yuehai Railway Company, which was set up to take care of this passage.

"How to prevent the boat from rocking too much while keeping it safe is a big problem," Yu said.

The center is now working out ways of ensuring the ship will run normally even against winds of force 8.

Jiangnan Shipyard based in the city has won the bid to build the ferry. If all goes well, the ship will arrive in Haikou of Hainan on October 31 in 2002 to test the related construction.

(China Daily 06/13/2001)