How 1,500 workers rebuilt the tracks at Longyan station in one night

What happens in the video

This short report from CCTV+, the video news agency of China Central Television, packs a whole night of work into less than two minutes. Its thumbnail is a grid of time-stamped camera feeds dated January 19, 2018: floodlit tracks, crowds of workers in orange vests and hard hats, and heavy rail machinery moving through the dark. The agency's description sums up the story: more than 1,500 workers needed less than nine hours to change several rail tracks at a station in Longyan, a city in Fujian province on China's southeast coast.

The split-screen camera views make the scale obvious: dozens of workers crowd each stretch of track while machines work right alongside them. The appeal is the sheer coordination, with hundreds of people doing different jobs in the same small space against a deadline set by the next day's trains.

Not a new station: what the crews actually did

Clips of the night spread around the world in early 2018, and many English-language headlines claimed China had built an entire railway station in nine hours. The UK fact-checking charity Full Fact and the magazine Slate later set the record straight: the station already existed, and the job was to rebuild its tracks. The CCTV+ title gets it right with the word "change."

According to Xinhua's report, work started at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, January 19, and was finished by 3 a.m. the next morning, about eight and a half hours. More than 1,500 workers, 7 trains and 23 excavators removed old track, laid new track and installed railroad switches. The goal was to connect a newly built line with three existing ones through Longyan station: the Ganzhou–Longyan, Ganzhou–Ruijin–Longyan and Zhangping–Longchuan railways.

Slate described the site as an interlocking, the stretch where trains switch between tracks, just outside the main station. Much of the work had been done in advance: track sections were prepared at temporary sites nearby and largely assembled during the day, so that on the night itself crews could push finished sections into place. A Shanghai-based transportation consultant told Slate the project had been prepared for two months, and Full Fact reports that seven groups of workers operated in parallel.

The railway the work made possible

The new line was the Nanping–Longyan railway (南龙铁路, Nánlóng tiělù). Xinhua described it as a 246-kilometer line designed for a maximum of 200 km/h, running through mountainous western Fujian with stops including Shaxian, Sanming, Yong'an and Zhangping. It was scheduled to open at the end of 2018 and was expected to cut travel time between Nanping and Longyan from seven hours to about 90 minutes, linking a less developed part of the province more closely with Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong.

Longyan has kept growing as a rail junction since then. In December 2023 China Daily reported the opening of a 92-kilometer high-speed line from Longyan to Wuping, designed for up to 250 km/h, as part of a wider network linking Fujian with Guangdong.

Riding through Longyan today

You cannot watch a night like this one, but you can ride the tracks it created. Longyan is the gateway to the Yongding area, home to some of the Fujian tulou, the round earthen clan houses that are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Trains to Longyan are booked like any other Chinese train: with your passport on the 12306 English website or app, through an agent, or at a station counter. Our high-speed train guide explains the whole process, from registration to the ticket gate.

• Check the station name. Longyan station is written 龙岩站 (Lóngyán zhàn). Larger cities have several stations, so confirm which one your train uses before you head out.
• Plan your connections. Lines from several directions meet at Longyan, which is exactly why the junction had to be rebuilt. When you change trains, follow the signs for 换乘 (huànchéng, transfer) or 出站 (chūzhàn, exit).
• Leave time for the checks. You show your passport at the station entrance and again at the ticket gate.

For another take on how smooth that track ends up, watch a coin balance on a Fuxing bullet train at 350 km/h.

Mandarin for train stations and transfers

Junction stations are where travelers most often need to ask for directions. The free signs lesson teaches you to recognize words like ticket office and exit, the platforms and transfers lesson covers changing trains, and the wrong train lesson helps if you end up on the wrong platform.