The tracks for the Beijing-to-Tianjin inter-city express train have now been laid. The new rail link is expected to offer the fastest passenger service in the country, with a maximum speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

The last track was laid on Sunday morning and a grand ceremony was held to mark the historic day.

With a total investment of 13 billion yuan, the express railway is a key sideline project for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It will shorten the journey between the two cities to thirty minutes from the current seventy minutes. A maximum of 20 pairs of trains will run along the rail every hour.

The railway uses the most advanced technology available and has several advantages over regular train lines. The comfortable carriages will remain stable even at high speeds, and the railway is capable of carrying very heavy loads. 500-meter long tracks are used to ensure the smoothness of the rails other train lines in China use tracks only fifty meters long.

Construction work on the Beijing-Tianjin high speed link started more than two years ago, and trains will start running before August next year.

There are currently 16 express railways being built in China. The country's blueprint for railway networks says by 2020, inter-city high speed rails will be constructed in the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Sea rim area and the Pearl River Delta. The overall track length will be more than 12,000 kilometers.