China Built a Massive 2,700km Elevated Railway in the Mongolian Desert

China engineered one of the most audacious infrastructure projects on Earth by building a 2,700-kilometer railway through the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang—a vast sea of shifting sand covering more than 127,000 square miles that was once called the place you go in but never come out. The final piece of this massive network is the Hotan-Ruoqiang Railway, an 890-kilometer line completed in June 2022 that completes the 2,685-kilometer Taklamakan Desert Loop. What makes this railway extraordinary is that more than 65 percent of it does not touch the ground at all. Instead, it runs on elevated viaducts supported by 11,000 concrete pillars rising 16 to 50 feet above the sand, letting desert wind sweep harmlessly beneath the tracks so blowing sand never buries the rails. Building this railway cost over 3.5 billion dollars, took more than a decade, and required 12,000 workers to solve problems that had stumped engineers for generations. Workers flattened massive dunes with hundreds of bulldozers, then stabilized the loose sand by spraying groundwater across the surface to bind the grains together before compacting it into a solid base. They drilled deep through unstable sand using bentonite slurry and steel casing pipes to reach solid ground, then poured concrete through tremie pipes to create deep foundations. The 11,000 pillars were built using slip forming with salt-resistant concrete additives to survive the corrosive desert air. Giant box girders weighing hundreds of tons each were transported across temporary tracks and placed by self-launching gantries with laser-guided millimeter precision. The steel rails, each over 260 feet long, were tensioned with hydraulic machines to handle temperature swings from 160 degrees in summer to below freezing in winter. Most construction happened at night to avoid heat that would crack concrete and sandstorms that blinded workers. The entire system is monitored 24 hours a day by sensors and solar-powered cameras. Beneath the desert floor lie billions of tons of oil, coal, and rare earth elements essential to modern technology, and this railway finally makes them accessible.