Beijing West Railway Station

Beijing West railway station is a major transportation hub in the Fengtai District of western Beijing, China, serving conventional and high speed rail alongside subway connections. It opened on January 21, 1996 after three years of construction, chosen through a design competition among institutes including the Ministry of Railways' Third Design Institute and the Beijing Architectural Design Institute, and was for a time the largest railway station in Asia at 510,000 square meters, before being surpassed by Shanghai Hongqiao. The station's renovated canopy was the first large span steel structure canopy built in China, and later expansions added a large span, curved steel truss roof with no platform columns; it handles between 150,000 and 180,000 passengers on an ordinary day, with peaks reaching 400,000, and its design capacity has grown from 60 to 70 train pairs a day to 137 pairs through successive expansions. In Beijing's 2008 public vote for new landmarks the station placed second, drawing more than 51,000 votes.