The Haoji railway, China's key north-to-south coal transport corridor, has surpassed 100,000 freight trains and 550 million tonnes of cumulative cargo since operations began, according to Hubei Daily.

Of the total volume, approximately 134 million tonnes, or about 24%, was coal delivered to Hubei province.

The 1,813.5-km railway runs from Haolebaoji South station in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, through Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hubei and Jiangxi, terminating at Ji'an station on the Beijing-Kowloon line. With a designed annual transport capacity exceeding 200 million tonnes, it is the world's longest heavy-haul railway built and opened in a single phase, serving as a key coal transport route from Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi to Hubei.

Xiangzhou North station, the largest hub on the line, handles train splitting, marshalling, locomotive changes and inspections for thousands of coal trains arriving daily from the energy "golden triangle" region, dispatching them to power plants, ports and steel mills across central China's Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.

In Xiangyang, the Yicheng power plant has connected directly to coal mines via a dedicated rail line, eliminating truck transfers and saving over 100 million yuan annually in logistics costs. In Jiangling, Jingzhou, large power plants including Huadian Jiangling operate around the clock, converting coal into electricity. Meanwhile, Hualu Hengsheng's modern coal chemical base, linked to the Haoji railway via a dedicated line, produces urea, acetic acid and other chemical products for the national market.

Before the Haoji railway opened, coal from Shaanxi reached Hubei via the Jiaoliu line, which mixed passenger and freight traffic at low efficiency. The new railway has eliminated the previous need for coal to travel from west to east and then via sea and river transport to reach central China. Shipments that once took over a month from Shaanxi to Hubei now arrive in about a day.