The last batch of 6,600 tonnes of rails for the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR) arrived at the Cilacap Port in Indonesia's Central Java province on September 21. The 142.3-kilometre HSR is scheduled to begin operations in early 2023, after several years of delays.
Chinese-Indonesian joint venture company PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC) held a ceremony to mark the event.
The rails will be transported in batches to the track-laying base of the Tegal Luar Depot, on the outskirts of Bandung, the capital of West Java province, via an existing narrow-gauge railway.
All the steel rails, weighing a total of 38,100 tonnes, were shipped over 10 months from the port of Fangchenggang, a city in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
With a speed of 350 kilometres per hour, the high-speed railway will cut the journey between Jakarta and Bandung from more than three hours to around 40 minutes.
The 2,190-metre Tunnel No. 8, located in Cikalong, West Java, was completed in August. It is the second longest tunnel on the entire line, and was built by China Railway Third Bureau, a unit of China Railway International Corporation.