On July 30, China Shenhua together with Baoshen Raiway, working in collaboration with CRSC Research & Design Institute Group Co., Ltd., successfully conducted an on-site operation test of a 15,000-tonne group train (formed by three 5,000-tonne heavy-haul trains) on the North Line of Baoshen Railway. This significant achievement follows the successful trial of two heavy-haul trains in April, marking an significant breakthrough in China’s heavy-haul train control technology and making China the world’s first to master group train operation control systems.

As the flagship listed company of CHN Energy, China Shenhua, which operates the 2,408-kilometer second-largest coal transport corridor from west to east of China, is an important contributor in stable energy supply for China. In recent years, facing the industry bottleneck of transport efficiency improvement, the Company has partnered with China Railway Signal & Communication Co., Ltd. (CRSC), Southwest Jiaotong University, and Central South University to tackle the world-level technical challenge of heavy-haul train tight tracking and collaborative control in response to the clarion call of Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee that socialism is achieved by hard work. After unremitting efforts over the past three years, the Company has mastered control techniques for single, empty, heavy, single-train, and multi-train group operations, culminating in the successful benchmarking trial of a three-train heavy-haul group operation.

Leveraging vehicle-to-ground and vehicle-to-vehicle communication, the group train control technology enables information transmission. By utilizing the collaborative control that combines relative speed and absolute distance two-dimensional control models for the train group composed of several trains, the control technology minimizes train group tracking distance and ensures dynamic tight collaborative operation, effectively solving long-standing issues like continuous train tracking encryption, high risk from coupler breakage in ultra-long heavy-haul trains, easy loss of control of longitudinal impulse, and complex yard marshalling operations. Compared to existing transportation methods, this system improves the throughput capacity of the station throat by at least 30%, departure and arrival throughput by 50%, and the train tracking capability across sections by at least 100%.

Building on the success of this trial run, China Shenhua will continue optimizing its group operation control systems, expand testing scale, and eventually achieve the goal of operating the world’s first 35,000-tonne heavy-haul group train by group control, establishing a Chinese paradigm for global heavy-haul rail technology and contributing innovative, safe, and efficient transportation solutions worldwide.