Photos above are all Line 2. (Photo provided by Chongqing Rail Transit (Group) Co., Ltd.)

CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- On June 18, 2005, Chongqing welcomed the operation of the first urban rail transit – Line 2. June 18, 2018, marked the 13th anniversary of the Chongqing Rail Transit. Over the years, Chongqing Rail Transit has operated 6 lines. In China, it is not only called CRT, but also a kindly nickname, “Hot Star.”

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Line 2 is the first Straddle Monorail in China. It is also the first urban rail transit line in western China. It is famous for the train passing through a building at Liziba Station.

“In the early 1990s, we sent a team of experts to Japan twice to inspect all the modes of Japan Railways, and found that the Japanese monorail trains are very suitable for the mountain terrain in Chongqing,” Zhang Naiji, former deputy chief engineer of the Chongqing Rail Transit Group, recalls. At that time, Japan’s monorail technology had been relatively mature. After investigation, Osaka’s large monorail was determined to be a good model the rail development of Chongqing.

“Because an altitude intercept of a slope cannot be greater than 24 meters, in order to solve the problem of buffer, we built Liziba Station and Fotuguan Station,” Zhang Naiji said, “One side of Fotuguan faces mountains, another side faces water. Japanese experts inspecting Chongqing spoke bluntly of the difficulty of construction, but at the same time said that the construction would be not only traffic lines, but also scenic lines.”

After overcoming many difficulties, thanks to the unremitting efforts of the rail builders, Chongqing finally saw the operation of the first urban rail transit line — Line 2 – in 2005.

Now, Liziba Station is hot. Many netizens want to know if the building or the rail existed first. Zhang Naiji laughed, “They were designed together. The piers of the rail and the columns of the rail are independent from each other so that they will not affect the residents nearby.”