Yanzhou North Station Upgrade Completed, Upgrading Southwest Shandong’s Freight Hub Capacity

A key railway capacity expansion project in East China has been fully put into operation after intensive construction. According to Xinhua News Agency, the renovation and upgrade project of Yanzhou North Station in Jining, Shandong province, was officially completed and launched at 16:30 on May 27 following 450 minutes of high-level concentrated construction work.

More than 2,000 construction workers fulfilled a series of core engineering tasks during the intensive operation phase. The project covered multi-yard renovation, commissioning of a newly built hump yard and comprehensive upgrading of the station’s signal system. The full completion marks an overall quality upgrade for the largest railway freight hub in southwest Shandong, optimising regional railway cargo operation capacity.

As a vital junction connecting North, Central and East China’s railway networks, Yanzhou North Station has long served as a critical freight distribution node. Continuous growth of regional cargo volume has brought mounting operational pressure in recent years, with saturated station capacity, frequent cross-operation interference and limited equipment maintenance space restricting the efficiency of regional logistics transportation.

The two-year renovation project systematically optimised the layout of Yanzhou North Station and Baijiadian Station. It included the reconstruction and new construction of arrival yards, marshalling yards, automatic hump facilities and connecting railway lines, alongside comprehensive upgrades of power supply equipment. The station adopted a longitudinal track layout to replace the original parallel structure, fundamentally eliminating operational conflicts between train marshalling and arrival-departure procedures and streamlining the entire transportation organisation process.

The project involved extensive working points, long construction lines and stringent precision standards. The construction team overcame complex technical challenges and carried out multi-surface and multi-discipline synchronous operations. More than 10,000 signal wiring circuits were dismantled, rearranged and calibrated during the construction. The seamless transition and data interconnection of signal interlocking, CTC and LKJ systems were realised, achieving zero errors and hidden dangers throughout the new and old system switching process.

The upgraded Yanzhou North Station removes major cargo transportation bottlenecks in the region. It delivers substantial improvements in train marshalling efficiency, transit capacity and overall hub throughput, greatly lifting the operational performance of southwest Shandong’s freight railway network.

The upgraded hub will efficiently connect inland industrial zones with coastal port logistics channels. It will continuously leverage the high-capacity and high-efficiency advantages of railway transportation to drive local logistics industry upgrading, boost integrated development of industrial sectors along the railway lines and bolster steady regional economic growth and rural revitalisation progress.