Located in Chongqing, southwest China, the world’s largest train station is a modern-day infrastructural wonder. Six times larger than New York’s Grand Central Station and fifteen times the size of Leipzig Haupbanhof, Europe’s largest train station, Chongqing East covers an area larger than some small towns. In fact it’s more than twice the size of the Vatican, in Rome.
Chongqing East features 29 platforms and 15 railway tracks and up to eight floors topped by a massive 16,500-tonne steel tube truss roof. Its 400-meter-long platforms are designed to handle up to 16,000 passengers per hour during peak periods, as well as China’s longest high-speed trains.
One of the most impressive things about the world’s largest train station is that it is essentially located on top of a mountain. Chongqing is famous for its mountainous terrain, making it one of the least suitable Chinese mega-cities to host such a massive transportation hub. But difficult terrain apparently means nothing when you have the know-how, the technology, the ambition, and an army of workers to achieve your vision.
According to the Xhinhua news agency, workers first needed to cut and blast a mountain into oblivion, then level the terrain for the construction of the giant train station. Nearly 2 million cubic metres of concrete and around 366,000 tonnes of steel were used to build this incredible transportation hub, with the help of up to 40,000 human workers and an army of robotic machinery.
Chongqing East took only 38 months to complete. That might not sound like such a shirt time, but considering most countries probably take longer just to get the necessary approvals for such a massive project, it’s an extremely short period of time!
For more impressive Chinese architecture and infrastructure, check out the world’s largest horizontal skyscraper and the world’s longest expressway tunnel.
