Loose_Grip/Pete's favorite photos

Today I read the sad news from China that diesels had started work in the section of the Sandaoling Coal Railway between the CNR exchange yard at Liushuquan to Nanzhan. December 2009 saw this JS class locomotive with the morning empties and the Tian Shan range as backdrop.

When I first visited theJalainur opencast mine in 1992 the coal was brought right out of the pit and up to the washery in the background. By 2006 it only came to the level that the train is on and then transferred to an underground conveyor to take it up to the washery. This empty coal train is just leaving the transfer station and is heading back into the workings.

The trouble with the passenger trains on the Pingdingshan Coal Railway is that the windows do not open and are covered by a protective mesh on the outside. This does not make for easy photography which is a great pity as there is much to see on the line running westwards to Baofeng and on to the mines at Hanzhuangzhan. Everywhere you look on this journey you can see collieries, or limekilns, or coke ovens, or brickworks, or the whole lot at once. Small mines abound and in this view through the grime smeared pane there are four headgears to be seen.

Pingdingshan was a city of level crossings when I first visited. This example at the western end of the marshalling yard at Shenxi was replaced by an underpass by May 2006. OK for donkey carts but no good for minibuses. The coal railway is so busy here that the crossings caused significant delays to the ever increasing road traffic.

A pair of QJ class locomotives with a short westbound freight a few kilometres before Lindong on the Jitong Railway. This sort of open vista is typical of this section of the line.

This is one of the larger mines in the Nanpiao area and this particular evening it was being shunted by SY 1092 which was the local favourite and kept in better external condition than the other locomotives on the line. Some of the wagons in the train still had wooden bodies, but these were restricted to internal use and did not appear on the China Rail network.

I learned tonight of news from China that the Huanan Coal Railway has finally succumbed, with the traffic being transferred to lorries. This view from April 2005 sums up the charm of this wonderful narrow gauge line as it climbed through the hills to reach the colliery.

Another scene from the past with 61 empty coal wagons and a van, topped and tailed by JS 2-8-2s, slogging uphill across the icy desert from the Liushuguan exchange sidings to Sandaoling.

This morning we were out and ready for the morning empties coming back uphill to Sandaoling from the exchange sidings at Liushuguan. As it happened the loaded train was running later than usual and this shot against the sunrise shows the train topped and tailed by a pair of JS class 2-8-2s running backwards. They returned some 40 minutes later with a long train, but the sky was rather brighter by then.