Chongqing West railway station


The Chongqing West railway station is a railway station of Chengyu Passenger Railway that is located in Shapingba District of Chongqing, People's Republic of China. It is the second largest railway station, after Xi'an North, in South Western China when opened on January 25, 2018. It will serve as Chongqing's connection with many destinations across south-western and north-western China. Situated in Shangqiao area of Shapingba, near the intersections of the G93 Chengdu–Chongqing Ring Expressway and the G85 Chongqing–Kunming Expressways. This is the third major railway station to serve Chongqing, after Chongqing North and Chongqing Stations. It opened in conjunction with the smaller nearby Shapingba station on the same day.
It will serve as a stop on the Chongqing–Lanzhou High-Speed Railway, Xiangyang-Chongqing Railway, Chongqing–Guizhou High-Speed Railway, Chongqing-Kunming Railway and Chengdu–Chongqing Railway.

History

Station Hall

Chongqing West Station has been constructed as a national Principal station. Constructed over 3 years, starting in 2014, it covers an area of 120,000 square metres, with a T-shaped exterior facade. Consisting of 6 floors, 3 above and 3 below ground. It will be expected to handle 15,000 people at any single time within the main hall complex.
Chongqing West Station adopts the modern Chinese practice with high speed railway stations with a "comprehensive traffic, three-dimensional layout". This refers to having the Waiting Hall, Platforms and Arrivals Halls on separate levels. The Station Hall has divided across five layers, with the main railway passenger station hall, a long-distance bus station, local city bus station, metro, taxi station, rental vehicles and private vehicle parking facilities.
Chongqing West Station consists of 15 platforms that serve 29 tracks.


Platform Layout

Naming Confusion

The station was built on the site of a railway freight marshalling yard. The name of this freight only station was Chongqing East, which is now a proposed station in the North East of Chongqing near Chongqing Jiangbei Airport.
This station should also not be confused with the nearby Shapingba railway station in the same district of Chongqing. This is an existing station renovated for Chengdu–Chongqing Intercity Railway services and opened on the same day, January 25, 2018. During the planning phases, there were discussions about combining Shapingba Station and the proposed Chongqing West into one large station either on the existing Shapingba Station site or a new site where the current Chongqing West Station was constructed. This has led to the name "Chongqing West Station" or "Shapingba" being applied to both proposed station locations at various times during planning, leading to some confusion between the two sites. It was later determined that there was enough rail traffic for both stations to co-exist.