ASTANA – Astana’s new railway station and junction are 80 percent constructed, Kanat Alpysbayev, head of the national railway company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy reported recently.
Photo credit: inform.kz
Installation and commissioning of the elevators and escalators, landscaping and finishing work will be completed by May 1.
The new train station’s passenger traffic capacity will be 12 million people a year and 35,000 passengers per day. That is twice as much as the actual annual traffic of the current train station. The area the new station occupies is eleven times greater than the territory of the old one.
Trains will arrive inside the building with the help of an overpass on the third floor. This will allow people and trains to move freely. A two-level parking garage will be available under the overpass. Passengers will be able to use it for public and private transport.
The train station will have six active tracks and one emergency rail line. The building will be heated by underground heat exchangers. The station will be equipped with energy-efficient elevators and escalators.
A passenger service will be built on a coastal and three island platforms. All the additional functions of the station will be implemented in a commercial building, which will be located on the other side of the tracks.
The modern railway station will feature a hotel, restaurants, cafes, a food court, first-aid posts and mother and child rooms. Ticket offices will be located on the ground and fourth floors.
The new facility will allow a more efficient use of the urban area. In particular, Mustafin Street will be uninterrupted with the help of a transit underground pass.
Construction of the station is carried out with the use of the latest advanced technologies. More than a thousand people are engaged in the works.
Concrete works, metal frame installation, roofing, cladding of the facades in the heated parts of the train station, central heating provision have been completed. Installation of bearings, metal structures and soundproofing screens has also been finished. Mounting of the top layer of the overpass is well underway.
Plating of the cornices, finishing works on the facades of the unheated parts of the station, installation of ventilation systems, external power supply are 90 percent completed, Alpysbayev said. Finishing works inside the station’s building are in full swing.
Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Askar Mamin visited the new railway station Jan. 11 to see the construction progress and highlighted the importance of putting these facilities into operation before the start of EXPO 2017.
