agreement to cooperate on the construction of a railway from Kowloon to Canton (now Guangzhou). The whole project was 87 miles (140 km) long, with 22 miles (35 km) in the British Section and 65 miles (105 km) for the Chinese Section. However, the English could earn 65% of the income while China could only earn 35% of it. Construction started in 1906. The most difficult section was the approx. 7200-foot-long (2195 m) Beacon Hill Tunnel, and about a hundred workers died in the construction. Construction The construction was mainly done by Chinese. The government built camps in Kowloon to support the construction. Most of the railway were flat land, so construction was relatively easy in those places. However, the construction of the Beacon Hill Tunnel involved digging and blasting, and the rocks made construction difficult. The two ends were of soft soil, but the centre was granite. This caused a huge delay in construction as it was not suitable to use explosives at the two ends while the explosives could not blast off a lot of rock in the centre. Pre-electrification era Opening of British section The railway line to the Chinese border, then called the Kowloon-Canton Railway (British Section), opened for passenger services on 1 October 1910. The remaining section from Lo Wu to Canton (now Guangzhou) was called the "Chinese Section" (now the Guangzhou-Shenzhen railway). Initially, service was only provided from Yau Ma Ti station to Fanling station with a tunnel through Beacon Hill. Opening of Chinese section After the "Chinese Section" was completed, through train service became available to Canton, through Sham Chun (now Shenzhen). Lo Wu station also serves as a border crossing, with a bridge across the Sham Chun River, the natural border between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Trains had to stop at Lo Wu station after Communist China closed the border and suspended the through train service in 1949. The line was generally single track, with a passing loop at each station. Closing of Sha Tau Kok Branch The line was originally built with narrow gauge tracks, but just before opening standard gauge track was laid and the original tracks were used to build a branch line, the Sha Tau Kok Railway from Fanling to Sha Tau Kok. This branch was unsuccessful and closed on 1 April 1928 following the opening of a road that ran parallel to the tracks. Post-1930s Through