By Xinhua,
Zhoucun, Shandong : The Qingdao-Jinan Railway reopened to traffic early on Tuesday, after more than 20 hours of interruption caused by a train collision that killed 70 people and injured more than 400 on Monday.
At 2:16 am, a cargo train weighing 1,185 metric tons rolled over the restored section of the railway in Zibo City of east China’s Shandong Province, followed by passenger train T196 from Qingdao to Beijing at 2:41 am.
Thousands of passengers were stranded at railway stations in Jinan, Qingdao and other destinations following the pre-dawn collision and derailments on Monday, but most were transferred to long-distance buses.
“So far, the accident site has been cleaned up and the stranded passengers evacuated,” said Wang Jun, head of the State Administration of Work Safety. “All the injured have been hospitalized and the dead have been transferred to local funeral homes.”
Wang is heading a State Council investigation team to pinpoint the cause of the accident, the worst train crash in China in a decade.
Casualties were recorded on both trains, one of which was en route from Beijing to Qingdao, a coastal Olympic co-host city in Shandong. The other was traveling from Shandong’s Yantai to Xuzhouin the eastern Jiangsu Province.
The high-speed train from Beijing, coded T195, derailed in the city of Zibo at about 4:40 a.m. on Monday and smashed into train 5034. The second train also veered off the tracks. At least 12 cars of the two trains derailed.
A preliminary investigation suggested T195 was running at 131 kilometers per hour at the time of the accident, while the speed limit of that section was 80 kph.
The accident happened just three days before the May Day holiday, when millions of Chinese holidaymakers will travel by train.
It caught the attention of top Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, who urged all-out rescue efforts on Monday.