A high-speed railway,linking the cities of Wuhan,?capital city of central China’s Hubei Provinceand Xining, capital city of northwest China's Qinghai Province, opened to traffic on Wednesday.

It marked the first timethat a high-speed traindeparting from Wuhanhas reachedthe Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the?highest?plateau?in?the?world.

The new railway line has slashed the travel time between the two cities to 9 hours and 9 minutes, shortening time by nearly 12 hours.

With the operation of the Wuhan-Xiningrailway,the number of provinces which are directly linkedwithWuhanby bullet trains has increased to 27, further enhancing thetransportation capacity of railwayin Wuhan.(en.hubei.gov.cn by Zhang Yawei）