Power losses have caused two serious disruptions to the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway since the service began operations on 30 June.

On 10 July thunderstorms disrupted the electrical supply to the railway’s Qufu-Zaozhuang section, causing 19 southbound trains to be delayed, reported China Daily. Passengers on the stricken train complained of being stranded for more than two hours in hot, dark carriages without air conditioning. Two days later, more than 30 trains were brought to a halt by an electrical failure in the power grid system near Suzhou, a city in Anhui province.

Wu Junyong, a professor specialising in railroad electrical engineering at Beijing Jiaotong University, told China Daily that a picture posted on Sina.com.cn suggested that the halt was caused by a burnt overhead electrical. The newspaper suggested possible causes of the malfunction were an inadequate installation of the wire or the use of poor-quality wire.

Mr Wu said that it is common for malfunctions to occur when trains first start to run on a high-speed railway and that their incidence tends to decline over time. He cited the example of the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway, where services were delayed at least five times in the three months after operations began in December 2009. Those delays were blamed on equipment malfunctions.

Despite these setbacks, the new service has already had an impact on the domestic airline sector, according to a China Daily article. Occupancy on flights between Beijing and Nanjing fell from 80 per cent in May and June to 65 per cent in the first three days of July.