Lhasa (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Hundreds of passengers travelling to Lhasa on the "super train" linking China to Tibet were stuck for more than five hours yesterday when a dining car was dislodged from the rest of the carriages.  This is the first incident on the route that became operational around two months ago, hailed as a "miracle of technology".

The car was dislodged as the train approached a station at Tsona Lake. Xinhua blamed malfunctioning of the signalling and switching equipment. No passengers were hurt. It was unclear if the dining car was towed to the station or reconnected to the train.

The Chinese media did not give details about the incident and omitted to mention any problems on the railway, but passengers on other trains on the same route have complained about hours of delays in transport. At Amdo station, to the north, at least two trains carrying hundreds of passengers had to wait hours for services to resume.

Beijing enthusiastically hailed the inauguration of the China-Tibet railway as an engineering marvel. The Tibetan provincial government recently said the line would be extended to the border with Nepal.

The project's origins go back way into the past. Mao Zedong and his Prime Minister Zhou Enlai were very keen on the project and were already thinking about it at the beginning of the People's Republic. Historians say the original idea can be traced back to Sun Yat-sen. Construction of the railway was divided in two: the first section, 800km long, was started in the early 80s and leads to Xining in Golmoud. The second spans 1,200km from Golmud to Lhasa, largely snaking its way through altitudes ranging between 4,000 to 5,000 metres. The highest point, near Tanggula, is 5,068 metres above sea level.

Since its first trip on 1 July, the new train has taken around 270,000 people on board. According to many Tibetan dissident groups, the train is just one more tool to reinforce the Chinese colonization of Tibet.