The oldest locomotive in service in Baotou, SY 0711, was not on the roster any more. Compared to January 2006 the situation was almost unchanged:
The steel works continue to expand, so the recently purchased diesels, class DF7G, have not replaced steam. They absorb the additional work. Diesel locos seen:
Five steam locomotives and one diesel were seen working during our stay. We were able to note these numbers:
The number of uphill trains is somewhat unpredictable. We had only one uphill train during daylight on both days of our stay, one with diesel, the other with steam. Five steam hauled downhill trains plus one diesel hauled downhill during daylight indicates that we were a bit unlucky, as all the steam trains returned during the night.
The station Guyaozi seems to be off limits now as a group of Dutch enthusiasts ran into trouble as well as a German gricer. The railway workers are friendly as ever, but there is someone in the office who finds it too dangerous to let railway enthusiasts approach the railway closer than some 200 metres. You have no problem taking pictures along the line, however, but.as the stations and the depot are boring this is no big loss.
According to some railway workers the line is going to use steam beyond 2006. However, nothing's for sure in this country.
The same questions as a few months ago gave different answers this time. I guess the information I could gather now is closer to the real situation than in January 2006. The largest industrial complex of this area (the ninth largest produce of copper in China) is not called "Factory 805" - this is probably the military factory for explosives and ammunition. The "Baiyin Nonferrous Metals Group" is the one which has some 400.000 employees. This is the company which allows visits to the workshop and the line. They have only one line: the well reported line to Shenbutong/Kuangsan.
Kuangsan was an open cast pit until 1987. The largest extension was 700 metres long and 400 metres deep. To open up this big hole they used more than 1,000 tons of TNT (probably supplied by the nearby military explosives factory). The open cast pit was served by railways which wound their way down to the bottom. They brought out the overburden by train as well and piled up huge dumps around the open cast pit. The railway on the main dump left the Station Shenbutong to the south and climbed steadily, passing through a tunnel and splitting off into at least two branches. As the ore was finished in the area of the open cast pit they opened an underground mine. The shaft is about 700 metres deep now. As the price for copper has grown rapidly in recent months the underground mine is highly profitable.
They have an overhead electric narrow gauge railway which transports ore and overburden. The overburden from the deep mine goes to the open cast pit and is filling it up slowly.
Usually there is one ore train daily to Kuangsan with 14 flat wagons. This train runs normally after the morning passenger. All trains to Shenbutong are chimney first uphill.
The smelter at Sanyelian is served by at least two freight trains daily. The first train during daylight normally arrives at Sanyelian between 10.30 and 11.00. The second train is scheduled around 3pm and can run before or after the afternoon passenger train. All uphill trains to Sanyelian are usually tender first. Trains mainly carry coal or sulphuric acid in yellow tank wagons.
The smelter south of Gongsi station has, similar to the steel works, a slag tip which is served by a short train of slag tippers. The train we saw from a distance had two slag tippers, coupled towards the smokebox of the locomotive. At the tender end there was a special flat wagon with a headlight on. It seems that they run always in this formation.
We didn't ask for a visit to the slag dump this time but will do later. The problem is that the slag dump is on the track which is obviously going further into the mountains - the military railway.
We found out some more information about the military lines in the area. One line goes south for about eight to ten kilometres to factory "802" or "805" (the latter one is probably the right number). Xinluchang is the name of the station the railway workers use. There is something a little odd about the length of the lines: it seems they always mix up the old Chinese "Li" and the modern "Gong Li" (= kilometre). A Chinese Li is about half a kilometre. The length of the line to Xinluchang was said to be 20 kilometres. Similarly with the other military line. I asked railway officials but they answered everything except the questions, so I asked some ordinary railway employees while I was not being monitored. They said the military line leaves south of Gongsi in a north easterly direction. The length of the line was given as 40 kilometres this time. In January they told me 36 kilometres. I guess the real length of this line is around 19 kilometres as the same worker claimed the line to Shenbutong was 30 kilometres long (almost exactly double the real length). On the military branch there are three stations, the names of which he wouldn't tell me. As we have already two names Huoyaoku at km 15 (or km 7-8) and Kuangshan at km 36 (or km 18-19) from the January trip, we can add Yinguang as third name.
The traffic on the military line seems to be very light. They have probably about two trains per week. This corresponds to the number of locomotives they have. We have been able to sort out a bit more about their rolling stock:
The military Factory 805 owns three locomotives, one diesel and two steam:
The SY should return into service very soon.
To repeat a headline from the January report, it is extremely ill-advised to try to explore this military operation on your own. In addition: nothing is certain as we got all information verbally. We haven't seen any line which could be this military line. In addition, Kuangshan and Kuangsan sounds very similar. On Google Earth you can see another industrial complex/mine north-north-west of the town, but this is not as far away as Shenbutong/Kuangsan
The name of the third company in Baiyin using steam seems to be "Factory 884", foreign trading name is "!North-West Copper Process Works". They have at least one SY in service:
The largest company in Baiyin, Baiyin Nonferrous Metals Group, still has 13 steam locomotives. Nine of them are serviceable. We got the number of the serviceable locomotives from the shed master:
They own four JS which have been out of use for five years, according to railway staff. I doubt this is right as the engines look as if they have been out of use for a lot longer and I didn't see any JS in use during my 1997 visit. Anyhow, the aggressive environmental conditions might make them look worse than dumped locomotives in other places. The numbers of the four JS are:
JS 8021 is dumped in a fenced area beside the depot (together with SY 0139 and 0194) while the others are parked south of the depot. The two SYs are in a very bad shape and are used as spare parts donors.
Although Baiyin is able to carry out full overhauls, they'll change to diesel within the next three years. They said it is getting more and more difficult to get the required spare parts. Baiyin is carrying out overhauls for other companies as well. A regular customer was the coal mine railway in Yaojie. Even now, as Yaojie is going to change to diesel they had SY 1130 in the workshop, stripped down for heavy overhaul. The loco belongs to "No. 205 Factory", trading name Lanzhou Coal, location: Haishiwan - Yaojie. Maybe, Lanzhou Coal operates more railway lines to their coal mines. In that case you could understand why they are still sending locomotives for full overhaul. The question is, where are the other steam operated lines?
In the depot of Baiyin we found SY 0737 as well, long time dumped in a corner. This loco belongs to the "North-West Steel Alloy Factory". The headquarter of the company is based in Lanzhou, while the factory itself is some 160 km far from Lanzhou in Yong Deng County. No further details could be gathered.
It seems there is still something to discover in this area. It's a fight with the remaining time. Although they still carry out overhauls, many of the remaining and still undiscovered lines will switch to diesel in the next few years, if not months.
The passenger timetable which is available from previous reports is not correct any more. We observed the following situation:
| Mo-Fr | Mo-Fr | www.FarRail.com | Mo-Fr | Mo-Fr | ||||||||||||||||||
| 02.00 | 07:35 | 07:50 | 09:55 | 12.30 | 13.45 | 15:15 | 17.20 | 18.15 | 20.40 | Baiyin Yinshan | 01.55 | 07.05 | 07.30 | 09:50 | 12.25 | 13.40 | 15:10 | 17:15 | 17:35 | 20.00 | ||
| 02.05 | 07:40 | 07:55 | 10.00 | 12.35 | 13.50 | 15:20 | 15:50 | 17.25 | 18.20 | 20.45 | Baiyin Gongsi | 01.50 | 07.00 | 07.25 | 08:40 | 09:45 | 12.20 | 13.45 | 15:05 | 17:10 | 17:30 | 19.55 |
| 07:50 | 08:00 | 15:30 | 16:00 | 18.30 | 20.55 | Liugongli | 01.40 | 08:30 | 09:35 | 17:00 | 17:20 | 19.45 | ||||||||||
| 08:00 | 08:10 | 15:40 | 16:10 | 18.40 | 21.05 | Sanyelian | 01.30 | 08:20 | 09:30 | 16:50 | 17:10 | 19.35 | ||||||||||
| 08:20 | 15:50 | 18.50 | 21.15 | Dongchanggou | 01.20 | 09:20 | 17:00 | 19.25 | ||||||||||||||
| 08:30 | 16:00 | 19.00 | 21.25 | Shenbutong | 01.10 | 09:10 | 16:50 | 19.15 |
The bold printed trains are chimney first. The two trains Gongsi - Yinshan at noon are for school children, these trains consists out of one single passenger coach and are pushed to Yinshan and chimney first hauled to Gongsi.
The "Qinghai - Tibet Railway" to Lhasa will be opened to the public on July 1st 2006.
Although it was stated in a report from 2004 that the Pinglan Railway was going to scrap their QJs soon, they are still in place and serviceable. The Pinglan Local Railway is in Shandong Province, located in RiZhao, 33 km long and runs from Lanshan port via Fengshui to the CR-station in Tieniumiao. The QJs are only used when one of their DF4Ds needs a repair. They could not say how long the QJs will remain serviceable.
The local Railway in Luzhou still has one serviceable QJ. It is not used as they have still only one pair of freights daily and sufficient diesel motive power.
High noon for steam gricers! China offers still the best steam operation in the world and is well worth a visit for the dedicated enthusiast.
