Music: Purple Passion - Diana Boncheva
Beijing Subway Line 2 is the first loop-line subway opened in Mainland China. With a total length of 23.1 kilometers, the line mostly travels along the Second Ring Road, the CHONGWENMEN Avenue, and the XUANWUMEN Avenue, which circles the most centric areas of the entire city.
Line 2 has two major sections: the northern section, traveling from FUXINGMEN to JIANGUOMEN with a shape of "n", was opened in 1984; the southern section, traveling from the south of FUXINGMEN to Beijing Railway Station, was originally a section of Line 1, and were opened in 1969. The two sections finally merged into a ring line in 1987, forming the "Line 2" we see today.
Due to the restrictions of constructing technologies at that time, the tunnels and stations were constructed by open-cut. But still, the station halls are tall, wide, and bright enough.
The carhouse of this line is located to the northwest of the loopline, named "Lake Taiping Carhouse". During morning and evening rush hours, people, especially railfans, could watch the trains rolling in and out of the carhouse.
With an average daily ridership over 10 million, the line is equipped with 50 6-car trains (1 scrapped due to malfunctioning). Modeled DKZ16, these trains were manufactured by CRRC Changchun in 2008. During rush hours, time between trains could even be shorter than 2 minutes, such that just after a train leaves a station, the next one rolls in immediately.
There are several older models before DKZ16, like DK6, DK9, DK11, DK16, and BD1. The major difference is that these trains use DC motors, while DKZ16 use AC motors. All of these older fleets had retired by 2008.
On June 15th 2021, the station announcements changed to a new version, which the Mandarin part was read by the same speaker who read the 2008 Beijing Olympic Game version of station announcements, while the English part was read by the speaker who read the Daxing Airport Express announcements.
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