The 1600-kms (1000-mile) Sichuan-Tibet Railway that has been included in the Thirteenth Five Year Plan will  cross 14 mountains -- two of them higher than Mont Blanc western Europe’s highest mountain -- to climb 14,000 metres up to Lhasa (about 3,200 metres) which is 10,500 feet higher than Chengdu. Estimated to cost 105 billion yuan ($16 billion), the railway line was first thought of in 1912, when China's first President, Sun Yat-sen called for a trans-Tibetan line. Work on easier stretches of the railway line, closest to Lhasa and Chengdu respectively, began in 2014. A national three-year “plan of action”, adopted in March for major transport-infrastructure projects, mentions the most difficult stretch: a 1,000km link between Kangding in Sichuan and the Tibetan prefecture of Linzhi (Nyingchi in Tibetan). The plan says this should be “pushed forward” by 2018. It will involve 16 bridges to carry the track over the Yarlung Tsangpo river, known downstream as the Brahmaputra. The Chengdu-Lhasa line is anticipated to be completed by around 2030.On May 16th Tibet Daily, the government mouthpiece in Tibet, said that work would start in the coming five years on around 2,000km of track. It would include a line from Shigatse to Yadong (or Dromo), near the border with India and Bhutan, and another one to Jilong (or Gyirong), near the border with Nepal. Journeying from Chengdu to Lhasa by rail will be only 15 hours in contrast to the tough 3-day journey by road as at present. A Chinese government website, China Tibet News, said in 2014 that building the Sichuan-Tibet railway had become “extremely urgent”, not just for developing Tibet but also to meet “the needs of national-defence-building”.