Alashankou railway station (Chinese: 阿拉山口站; pinyin: Ālāshānkǒu zhàn), also known as Alataw Pass railway station (also spelt Alatau and Ala Tau) is a railway station in Börtala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Located on the Chinese side of the Dzungarian Gate pass through the Dzungarian Alatau mountain range at the 2358.376 km point of Lanxin railway, it is the last station on the Northern Xinjiang branch of the Lanxin railway before entering Kazakhstan. For the first twenty-plus years of its history it was the only railway port of entry in western China; during this time, the volume of international rail freight going through the Alashankou port of entry grew from 160,000 tons in 1991 to 15,160,000 tons in 2011.
In another report (not quite consistent with the previous one), the volume of rail freight crossing the border at Alashankou during the first 10 months of 2011 were reported as 8,921,000, which was said to be a 12.8 increase over the previous year. The volume of traffic, measured by weight, going from Kazakhstan to China is much higher than from China to Kazakhstan (7,412,000 tons vs. 1,509,000 tons). The main commodities that went from Kazakhstan to China via Alashankou were iron ore, high-carbon ferrochrome, wheat, and steel. Among the goods shipped from China to Kazakhstan, the main groups were steel (in particular, steel pipes), electronics, and tomato paste.
There is also a passenger train, Almaty-Urumqi, that crosses the border at Alashankou.
It is expected that the second railway port of entry on the Sino-Kazakh border, at Khorgos, will open in the late 2012.
Famous quotes containing the words railway and/or station:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)