Mondo Knows Facts
The highest railway in the world climbs over 5,000 metres
The Qinghai-Tibet line crosses the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 metres
The railway from Xining to Lhasa runs for 1,956 kilometres across the Tibetan plateau, with much of it above 4,000 metres. Carriages carry supplementary oxygen and the locomotives are specially built for thin air. To protect the permafrost beneath the track, engineers used crushed rock embankments and thermosyphon pipes.
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Tags: railways, tibet, altitude
The highest railway in the world climbs over 5,000 metres: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The Qinghai-Tibet line crosses the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 metres. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a records & extremes fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
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