Plateau frozen soil can be called the "killer" of plateau railway, and building railway in frozen soil area has always been a worldwide engineering problem. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the region with the highest altitude and the largest distribution of frozen soil in the middle and low latitudes in the world. The Qinghai-Tibet railway has to cross the frozen soil area for 550 kilometers, accounting for almost half of the total length of the line. In order to solve the problem of "frozen soil", railway builders actively explored, established the design of active cooling, cooling foundation and protecting frozen soil, insisted on scientific research and experiment first, and adopted a complete set of frozen soil technical measures with stone air-cooled subgrade, gravel slope protection, road protection and crossing special bad frozen soil sections as the main body, which enriched the frozen soil technical measures and improved the construction quality of frozen soil railway projects. With the successful completion of frozen soil subgrade, bridges, culverts, tunnels and pipelines in frozen soil areas, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is also known as the "World Museum of Frozen Soil Engineering".
In order to open the "heavenly road" that brings happiness and auspiciousness to the people of all ethnic groups in Qinghai-Tibet at an early date, the builders of the Qinghai-Tibet railway stick to the plateau and make great efforts to overcome difficulties. However, the unique plateau environment does pose a great threat to the health, life safety and labor ability of builders. Working at high altitude will lead to the decline of human function. If hypoxia is serious, it will lead to life-threatening acute altitude sickness such as pulmonary edema and brain edema. Under the harsh environment of cold and hypoxia, strong ultraviolet radiation and lack of drinking water, it is a severe test for the construction of Qinghai-Tibet railway to ensure that the railway construction army can get ahead, stand firm and do well. In order to ensure the life and health of builders, the railway department implemented the policy of "prevention first, combining prevention with control", and established a strict health guarantee system and a scientific health guarantee system during the construction process. The Ministry of Railways established the first prevention and treatment center for altitude sickness in Golmud, and established a three-level medical security system in the whole line. At the peak of construction, * * * established 144 tertiary medical institutions, equipped with more than 3,900 conventional medical equipment, set up 17 large oxygen stations and purchased 25 hyperbaric oxygen chambers, forming a complete medical network, which can treat critically ill patients quickly and effectively.