Tangshan has started construction on an iron ore railway network to reduce environmental damage caused by road freight transport.

About 150 kilometers east of Beijing, Tangshan, Hebei province is a major coastal city in North China with several coastal ports and iron and steel corporations.

Construction for 10 rail lines started on Wednesday and will be completed by the end of the year, according to a report by Hebei Television.

By then, a total of 15 special railways for transporting iron ore between Tangshan Port and iron company warehouses will be in service, becoming China's largest iron ore railway network to change from road freight transport, the report said.

The network's capacity for transporting iron ore will reach 200 million metric tons, accounting for around 61 percent of the total volume in the Bejing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

It will help cut the use of vehicles on highways by a factor of eight million, thus reducing the emission of oxynitride and dust by 15,000 tons and 1,400 tons respectively.