Hong Kong (CNN) — Well at least this one probably won't sink.

China is building a life-size replica of the doomed RMS Titanic in a landlocked county more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from the sea.

The total cost of the project is expected to run to around 1 billion yuan, or $145 million.

Workers lay the keel of a replica Titanic in China's Sichuan province. VCG/Getty Images AsiaPac/Getty Images

Landlocked

The replica is being built as part of a tourism development partially funded by the government of Daying county, in China's Sichuan province.

Daying is located around 130 kilometers from the provincial capital Chengdu, and several hundred miles from the sea. The replica Titanic will be permanently docked in a reservoir in the Qijiang River.

The project will cost around $145 million. VCG/Getty Images AsiaPac/Getty Images

Planning for the project has been underway for over two years, though building work only began this week, according to the state-run China Daily

"After the RMS Titanic sank, nobody saw its complete set of blueprints," Su Shaojun, one of the financiers of the project, told the newspaper.

"Many blueprint fragments found their way into the hands of collectors or remained missing. We spent many years collecting the blueprints from many parts of the world and managed to obtain most of them."

Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has announced that Titanic II, a nearly-exact replica of the doomed ocean liner Titanic, will be ready to set sail in 2018.

Titanic II

The Sichuan Titanic isn't the only recent attempt to recreate the sunken ocean liner.