CHONGQING, China, July 13: China has completed the world’s largest railway station, Chongqing East, in the mountainous municipality of Chongqing after an intensive construction effort that took just 38 months.
Built in one of southwestern China’s most rugged terrains, the sprawling transport hub is reported to be six times larger than New York’s Grand Central Terminal, 15 times larger than Leipzig Hauptbahnhof—the largest railway station in Europe—and more than twice the size of Vatican City.
The station features 29 platforms and 15 railway tracks designed to accommodate China’s longest high-speed bullet trains. Its 400-meter-long platforms can handle up to 16,000 passengers per hour during peak travel periods.
A striking engineering feature of the complex is its massive steel-truss roof, weighing approximately 16,500 tonnes, which sits atop an eight-storey terminal building.
According to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, engineers first blasted away sections of a mountain with explosives to create level ground for the project. Construction required nearly 2 million cubic meters of concrete and around 366,000 tonnes of steel.
The mega project employed about 40,000 workers alongside a large fleet of robotic construction equipment, highlighting China’s rapid infrastructure development capabilities.
Completing a project of this scale in just 38 months is considered remarkable, as similar large-scale infrastructure developments in many countries often spend longer than that in planning and regulatory approval alone.
