The Ganlong Railway passes through mountainous terrain in southern Jiangxi and western Fujian and connects Ganzhou, on the Beijing-Kowloon Railway, with Longyan, on the Longyan-Xiamen Railway.
Much of region along route was part of the Chinese Communists' guerilla base area in the early 1930s, including Ruijin, the capital of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and Changting, another stronghold of the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet.